Net Gain: A Common-Sense Climate Change Policy for Canada

Most Canadians have come to agree that the federal carbon tax needs to go. But while the rallying cry “Axe the Tax!” has been a deadly partisan tool for Pierre Poilievre, it does not constitute a credible election campaign platform, let alone a coherent environmental policy for a new government. The Conservative Party needs to develop both, writes Robert Lyman. The election this past week of Donald Trump as U.S. President creates an urgency to remake Canada’s climate policy on more realistic, sensible grounds. Drawing upon the pragmatic, economics-driven approach of the Copenhagen Consensus, Lyman proposes a middle path that discards the uncompromising, self-destructive ideology of the Justin Trudeau government while recognizing that most Canadians won’t accept doing nothing.

The Justin Trudeau government has made reducing greenhouse gas emissions the pre-eminent goal of public policy. In 2021 it passed the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, binding present and future governments to a process intended to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 and to set incremental five-year emission reduction targets and plans towards that end. Net zero essentially means eliminating almost all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the consumption of hydrocarbons – crude oil, natural gas and coal – in the Canadian economy, and doing so within 29 years of the new law’s passage.

This presents an immense challenge and is effectively impossible in the intended timeframe. Canadians currently rely on fossil fuels to meet about 73 per cent of their energy needs. These energy sources provide services essential to Canadians’ incomes and wellbeing: secure, reliable and affordable heat, lighting and motive power to move people and goods, as well as the food, medicine and other critical services to sustain them. Without these energy sources, Canadians would all be far poorer, colder, less mobile and less able to compete in the global economy.

Impossible dream: With fossil fuels currently meeting 73 percent of Canada’s overall energy requirements and fulfilling critical needs from heating to medical services, getting to “net zero” emissions anytime soon seems delusional. (Sources of photos: (top two) Pexels; (bottom two) Unsplash)

At least four trends are coming together to make the present policy course untenable:

The Canadian public is becoming far more aware of the financial costs of the emission reduction measures, including especially the impact of “carbon” taxes (technically, taxes on fossil fuel-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂)) and higher electricity rates from switching away from lowest-cost generating options. Federal climate-related spending, by the government’s own admission (see page 125 of the pdf version of the linked document), is now in the range of $20 billion per year, while the economic cost of working towards net zero has been credibly estimated at $60 billion per year.
The public – notably young people and seniors – are becoming more aware of the effects of climate-related regulations and taxes on the cost of living, especially the cost of housing, and on employment opportunities.
There is a wide and growing disparity between the promises of politicians to reduce emissions and what is actually happening; no national emissions “target” has ever been met or is likely to be met.
Rapidly growing emissions in many developing countries (especially China and India), which now collectively generate 68 percent of the world’s total, demonstrate that net zero will not be achieved globally. Furthermore, reductions achieved regardless of cost in Canada (which produces approximately 1.5 percent of global emissions) will yield negligible global benefits in terms of temperature or weather.

The Temptation of a Different Kind of “Net Zero” Policy

Based on these trends, it might be argued that Canada should perform an immediate policy U-turn and cancel all federal measures founded upon any claim of impending climate catastrophe. This would give new meaning to the term “Net Zero Policy”: a government whose climate change policy is to have no policy. Enthusiasm for such an approach must, however, be tempered by the recognition that it runs counter to the position held by all the main political actors in Canada, including notably the mainstream media. Policy, like politics, best evolves in the realm of compromise and consensus.

“Axe the Tax” has its limits: Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre (top) has pledged to get rid of the hated consumer carbon tax and eliminate comprehensive electric vehicle mandates, but he’s expected to maintain the pricey “producer” carbon tax on industrial emitters. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Paul Daly; (middle) WSDOT, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; (bottom) Shutterstock)

Thus, one should consider where might lie a “middle ground” that could garner the support not only of those strongly opposed to all elements of current policy – which can loosely be described as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s core base – but also of moderates, i.e., people who do not doubt the general notion of climate change but who shy away from radical or ruinous policies to deal with it. This disparate category likely includes much of the business community, what used to be called “Red Tories”, some centrist Liberals disaffected with Trudeau and some working-class NDP voters suspicious of that party’s current direction.

Politics at its most basic will require that the Conservatives have something to put in their campaign platform entitled “climate change”, “emissions” or, more broadly, “the environment”. So far, Poilievre has been cobbling together policy ideas seemingly ad hoc. As practically every Canadian knows, he pledges to get rid of the consumer carbon tax – the one everyone pays at the gas pump or on their natural gas heating bill.

Less understood, however, is that Poilievre is widely believed to intend to maintain the “producer” carbon tax on industrial emitters – an equally steep, equally escalating levy that is burdening industry with billions of dollars in additional taxation. Additionally, Poilievre has promised to get rid of some major Liberal-imposed regulations – like the mandate to transition to entirely electric vehicle production by 2035 – but would rely even more heavily on other technocratic regulations at the industrial level.

Some of these policies make sense on their face; some might not make sense at all. What is clear, though, is that the Conservatives do not have a complete climate change and/or environmental policy – at least not one they have shared with the public. Eliminating the consumer carbon tax as an unfairly imposed cost and needless drag on the economy as well as a symbol of climate policy over-reach would be an important and politically popular way to demonstrate a more common-sense approach.

It is not enough, however, and it would leave a new government vulnerable to the accusation that it lacked a coherent and well-considered approach. Attempting to govern without a clearly articulated overall policy on climate would politically damage even a solid majority government; in a minority situation, it could be enough to destabilize the government altogether and prompt an early election.

A Better Way

There is a better way – a middle way between the current ideological approach and a no-policy-policy. It is inspired by the work of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. This ongoing project seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare in a range of areas, from battling diseases like malaria to advancing national economic development to addressing climate change, through methodologies based on welfare economics, which centres on cost-benefit analysis.* The Copenhagen Consensus was conceived and launched in the early 2000s by Bjorn Lomborg, the famous Danish environmentalist. In each policy area examined, subject matter experts present potential policy solutions, which are evaluated and ranked by a panel of economists, thus emphasizing rational prioritization through economic analysis.

Of 15 possible policy measures to respond to climate change, the Copenhagen Consensus panel ranked carbon taxes the very worst – something that’s of obvious relevance to Canada. Also of interest in the Canadian context was the experts’ strong endorsement of research into carbon storage.

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In 2009 the Copenhagen Consensus assembled an expert panel to consider the best responses to climate change and rank them as priorities. The panel was asked to answer the question: “If the global community wants to spend up to, say $250 billion per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do most good for the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?”

In the resulting report, the top priorities generally focused on investments in scientific research and technology development and commercialization, while measures to reduce CO₂ emissions using currently available technologies were ranked lower, because these were found to incur high costs in relation to the expected environmental benefits. Of 15 possible policy measures to respond to climate change, the Copenhagen Consensus panel ranked carbon taxes the very worst – something of obvious relevance to Canada. Also of interest in the Canadian context was the experts’ strong endorsement of research into carbon storage (something that Alberta and Saskatchewan are very enthusiastic about), planning for adaptation and the expansion and protection of forests.

A better way: Founded by Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, the Copenhagen Consensus Center uses rational economic analysis to advance global welfare in areas from battling disease to addressing climate change. (Source of left photo: TED Conference, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Copenhagen Consensus approach to climate policy presumes that human-induced climate change is occurring and that it probably will have adverse effects, but it contends that other social and environmental issues are more serious threats to humanity and should be addressed as higher priorities. Its careful analyses came to recognize the limitations of currently available technologies in achieving a cost-effective transformation of the global energy system. This is why it advocates prioritizing a significant increase in funding of basic science to accelerate the discovery and commercialization of new emission-reducing technologies. It also places priority on measures taken to adapt to (rather than seek to prevent) potential climate changes and to enhance the overall resiliency of the energy system.

Climate Change Policy Implications for Canada

The Copenhagen Consensus’ cost-benefit-based prioritization of climate change policies is applicable to Canadian policy-making and governance approaches in several important and broad areas, at not only the national but international and inter-provincial levels. What follows is a brief, simplified discussion of the most important aspects, keeping in mind that some of these are large issues in themselves and not resolvable overnight.

Remove the Pressure of Overly Ambitious and Arbitrary Targets

Canada has never met any of the targets set at the international or national levels regarding either the magnitude of emission reductions or the arbitrary dates by which these would be reached. The use of such arbitrary and unrealistic targets should be reduced or avoided. A first step in applying the Copenhagen Consensus’ recognition of the immense difficulty and complexity of achieving an energy transition, along with the need for new technologies whose development does not occur according to a government-controlled timetable, would be for Canada to postpone the “Net-Zero by 2050 goal” to at least 2070 if not 2100.

Adopt a Multi-Goal Framework

Canadian climate policy would henceforth be developed within a multi-goal public policy framework. Rather than making emission reduction the preeminent goal, the federal government would seek to optimize climate policy alongside multiple other public policy objectives including economic prosperity (growth, employment, investment and trade), social harmony, environmental quality, financial responsibility, energy security, defence and promotion of good federal-provincial and international relations, among others.

“Arbitrary targets”: Applying Copenhagen Consensus rational analysis would mean abandoning or postponing Canada’s “Net-Zero by 2050” goal and focusing instead on practical environmental improvement projects. Shown at bottom, the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant in Edmonton, Alberta. (Sources of photos: (top) JessicaGirvan/Shutterstock; (bottom) Urban Edmonton)

Prioritize the Real Environmental Problems

Despite what one reads and hears in the mainstream media, Canada has very high environmental quality and the areas that need improvement are relatively few. These include solid waste management, sanitation/wastewater treatment and sulphur dioxide emissions per unit of GDP. Most of these are provincial and/or municipal responsibilities, but the federal government can play a role in funding capital investments. Where the federal government has jurisdiction and must regulate, regulatory efforts should focus on addressing tangible environmental problems with practical, cost-beneficial, affordable solutions to further clean up the air, water and soil, and the results should be measured and tracked by comprehensible and publicly available metrics.

Adhere to Technological Realism

A common-sense approach would recognize that energy transitions take a long time. The pace of transition away from fossil fuels must, accordingly, be guided by the rate at which new scientific discoveries can be applied to the development of new products and services and then commercialized to the point of true economic viability. A common-sense policy approach in Canada would abandon the presumption that governments can and should attempt to hasten the technology commercialization process by “picking winners”, granting large subsidies to favoured firms or otherwise trying to centrally plan the changes in the energy economy. Instead, the new approach would entail higher levels of government funding for basic research and development.

The federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan could add about $55,000 to the average cost of a new home built in Canada. A new Canadian climate policy would abandon this plan and leave the establishment of building codes, zoning and construction approvals in the hands of provincial and municipal governments.

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Promote Energy Security and Reliability

A new Canadian climate policy would repeal or substantially amend the Clean Electricity Regulations that mandate the elimination of hydrocarbon-based electricity generation by 2035, a goal that this recent study concludes is completely unfeasible. It would also require that future federal or provincial regulation of GHG emissions be based upon a systematic review of the potential impacts on the viability and competitiveness of Canadian industry. Finally, it would eliminate the impending federal cap on oil and natural gas industry emissions (which was unveiled on November 4 and imposes a 35-percent rollback in GHG emissions by 2030) and take other measures to ensure that Canada, which has the world’s third-largest crude oil reserves as well as world-scale natural gas reserves, can continue to increase energy production to meet the needs of domestic and export markets.

The steep cost of compliance: The Justin Trudeau government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan will add an estimated $55,000 to the average price of a new home, pointing to the need to eliminate costly and pointless regulation. (Source of photo: pnwra, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Reduce Housing Costs

According to the Fraser Institute, the federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan could add about $55,000 to the average cost of a new home built in Canada. Even more stringent and costly regulations would undoubtedly follow after 2030 to meet the net zero target. A new Canadian climate policy would abandon this plan and leave the establishment of building codes, zoning and construction approvals in the hands of provincial and municipal governments. This would contribute meaningfully to addressing Canada’s housing affordability crisis.

Legislate Wisely

A new policy would include amending or repealing the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The entire law is a litigation “trigger” because it gives climate activist organizations weapons that they can use to engage in “lawfare” – the strategic use of legal proceedings to hinder, intimidate or delay an opponent.

Depoliticize the Regulation of Energy Infrastructure Projects

A new policy would return the regulation of energy infrastructure and rate-making to one that takes place at arm’s length from government political and policy direction. This would require changes to the federal minister’s control of the Canadian Energy Regulator. It would also be highly desirable to reform the system of environmental assessment and review by placing strict time limits on the duration of infrastructure project reviews. Today, regulatory reviews of major energy projects often take five years or longer to complete, and some have taken over 10 years.

The federal Impact Assessment Act (having last year been found largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada) would be substantially amended so that the resulting federal law returns to being a review of the national environmental impacts (and any local impacts as these pertain to areas of clearly federal jurisdiction) rather than an exercise in jurisdictional duplication and an assessment of consequences for the entire planet.

A common-sense climate change policy would also streamline, limit the scope of and quicken the currently often 10-year-long environmental assessment process. Shown, the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, B.C. under construction, January 2024. (Source of screenshot: Northcoast Drone/YouTube)

The principle of “whoever hears the evidence should decide” would be brought back into the law, with an appeal to the courts on a question of law only and an appeal to the federal Cabinet on a question of policy. This is how the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has worked for several decades.

The arbitrary and harmful bans on oil tanker traffic on the Pacific Coast and on new hydrocarbon exploration and development in Canada’s Far North would be removed.

Promote Federal-Provincial Harmony

In the pre-2000 period, federal climate policy explicitly recognized that measures should not entail undue costs and burdens on any region or province. This went out the window in the Trudeau era and became a leading cause of federal-provincial discord. A new policy would re-institute this as a cardinal principle. Among other things, it would also be essential to ensure that there was ample coordination and consultation with all affected provinces before any new international commitments were made.

Focus on harmony: To promote more efficient cross-border trade, Canada’s regulatory standards should align with those of the U.S. The incoming Donald Trump Administration is likely to discard electric vehicle mandates and “clean” fuel standards, policy shifts that will affect Canada. (Sources of photos: (top) AP Photo/Evan Vucc; (bottom) Sundry Photography/Shutterstock)

Harmonize Canadian and United States Regulatory Regimes

It would be recognized that to facilitate more seamless cross-border trade with Canada’s largest trading partner, the United States requires that regulatory standards and codes developed in Canada, especially involving the regulation of fuel efficiency/emissions intensity of vehicles and appliances, be closely aligned with U.S. federal standards. It is widely expected that the incoming Trump Administration will discard electric vehicle mandates and “clean” fuel standards, policy shifts that clearly will affect Canada. Although this is not to suggest that Canada allow its policies to be dictated by the U.S., close attention should be paid.

Facilitate Truly Responsible Investing

Canada has committed to adopting the new Sustainability Disclosure Standard under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which imposes mandatory sustainability-related disclosure and climate-related financial disclosure. These and similar regulatory initiatives are increasing the burden on Canadian firms to report not only their own estimates of GHG emissions but also to try to guess those of their suppliers and customers. This is absurd on its face and creates another trigger for endless litigation when such guesses turn out wrong, prompting accusations of fraud. A new Canadian climate policy would severely restrict the use of such accounting measures.

Fairly soon, the current Official Opposition is likely to take on the responsibility of actually governing. To respond effectively to the economic and political threats posed by climate catastrophism, advocates of policy change must go beyond merely targeting individual policies for cancellation based on complaints about the harm they do.

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Build Adaptation and Resilience

A new Canadian climate policy would place greatly increased, perhaps primary, emphasis on measures to increase the resilience of Canadian infrastructure and economy to future climate changes. Adaptation measures can avoid or reduce adverse future impacts by, for example, changing human behaviour in advance, such as land use rules that prohibit construction of buildings in flood-prone areas, or by taking actions to protect valued resources, communities and landscapes. Many adaptation measures also increase resilience towards climatic variability such as droughts and storms, making them potentially attractive policies even in the absence of long-term human-induced changes. They can pay dividends to society even if all the concerns about climate change turn out to be greatly exaggerated.

A new climate change policy should include measures to increase the resilience of Canadian infrastructure and the economy to future climate changes. Shown, (at top) a storm in coastal Nova Scotia; (at bottom) flooding in B.C.’s Lower Mainland. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan; (bottom) The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

Who Might Implement the Copenhagen Consensus in Canada?

It is clear that the Trudeau government is incapable of such a significant policy reform as summarized above. It is at least conceivable that, were Trudeau to be replaced before the next election, his successor might consider some of these measures; conceivable, but not likely. Most probably, the task of implementing such broad policy changes would fall to a new Conservative federal government. The party’s promises to “Axe the Tax” correctly address the mounting public concern about the impact of carbon taxes on the cost of living and competitiveness of Canadian business, as well as the unfairness with which they have been applied.

Fairly soon, however, the current Official Opposition is likely to take on the responsibility of actually governing. To respond effectively to the economic and political threats posed by climate catastrophism, advocates of policy change must go beyond merely targeting individual policies for cancellation based on complaints about the harm they do. They must think through what a realistic, credible, politically palatable – and cost-effective – climate policy framework would look like. The time to start is now.

*Cost-benefit analysis is a tool economists use to compare the estimated costs and benefits (or opportunities) associated with a proposed undertaking. It involves tallying up all the current and projected long-term costs and benefits, estimating the financial equivalent of those for which dollar equivalents are not available, and converting everything into present-value terms using discount rates. If the costs outweigh the benefits, then the decision-makers should rethink whether to proceed.

Robert Lyman is a retired energy economist who served for 25 years as a policy advisor and manager on energy, environment and transportation policy in the Government of Canada.

Related Topics:#C2CJournal #NetZero EnvironmentalPolicy RobertLyman

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Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part I

Published on November 1, 2024

Todayville

From the C2C Journal

By Lynne Cohen

In his judicial review of the Liberals’ response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that “there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable.” With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s draconian actions thus exposed as unnecessary and excessive – in other words, illegal and unconstitutional – what now awaits Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, who each face up to 10 years in jail for playing key roles in the protest? In the first of a two-part series, Lynne Cohen charts the lengthy and vindictive prosecution of the pair, from their first appearance in downtown Ottawa to their initial arrest and pre-trial treatment.

As the 13-month-long trial of Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber lurched into its final days at the Ottawa Courthouse, Assistant Crown Attorney Siobhain Wetscher reached for her highest dudgeon and broadest hyperbole. In making her closing arguments, Wetscher declared this to be an “overwhelming case” backed by an abundance of “significant evidence.” Attempting to draw the focus onto the assembled facts, she swatted away claims it was a politically-motivated prosecution. “The defendants are not on trial for politics,” Wetscher stressed. “They crossed the line, objectively. The smell, the noise, the harassment were not lawful!” Given the reaching tone and considering the actual weight of the evidence, it often seemed as if Wetscher was trying to convince herself as much as Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey.

To back their case, Wetscher and fellow Assistant Crown Attorney Tim Radcliffe had prepared a PowerPoint presentation that was projected onto two screens in Courtroom 5 during their final arguments. Entitled “R. v. Christopher Barber & Tamara Lich: Closing Submissions of the Crown”, the 106-slide exhibit began by listing the various charges: committing mischief, obstructing a peace officer and blocking a highway as well as counselling others to commit mischief, obstruct, block a highway and disobey a court order (the last one against Barber only). It also offered a quick guide to dozens of previous mischief, obstruction and intimidation judgements considered relevant to the case.

An “overwhelming case”: According to the closing arguments of Assistant Crown Attorneys Siobhain Wetscher (top left) and Tim Radcliffe (top right) presented in the Ottawa Courthouse, the trial of Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber was not about politics, but the fact the pair “crossed the line” during the protest. (Source of bottom photo: CTV News)

Beyond a useful summary of the charges and case law, the Crown’s slideshow was also meant as one last reminder of the “significant evidence” arrayed against the Freedom Convoy pair. It thus contained numerous exhibits already submitted during the 45-day trial, including maps of the protest area, snippets from TikTok videos, transcripts from press conferences, witness testimony and interrogations as well as court orders, texts, letters, handbills, emails, Facebook posts and so on. As such, it serves as a kind of multimedia scrapbook for the entire three-week-long protest in Ottawa during January and February 2022.

And as is usually the case with scrapbooks, there were also plenty of photographs, presumably selected for the same reason as all the other evidence – because they bolster the case against Lich and Barber. In particular, the pictures are meant to provide proof of their close partnership in leading an unlawful protest and convincing others to break the law. But there’s a problem with this plan: none of the photos show either doing anything other than participating in an entirely peaceful, apparently constitutional and often quite-joyous-looking protest.

Slide 61, for example, shows the duo in winter gear hugging each other with big grins on their faces. Slide 76 has a smiling Lich explaining on TikTok that the protest is “like Canada Day on steroids.” Slide 100 is a screenshot of Lich on the verge of being arrested telling her Facebook supporters that, “I pray and hope that you will make your choices from love…we can only win this with love.”

And then there’s slide 106. The presentation’s last slide pairs a quote from Wetscher and Radcliffe with yet another picture of Lich and Barber. The text reads, “The Crown respectfully requests that the court find Mr. Barber and Ms. Lich guilty of all counts as charged.” The photo shows them together once more – again smiling broadly. This time they’re standing with Mike Stack, another protester, in front of Barber’s truck “Big Red”. If the point of this photo is to prove once and for all that Lich and Barber were engaged in a dangerous, insurrectionist conspiracy, it fails miserably.

The Crown’s 106-slide closing presentation served as a multi-media scrapbook of the three-week-long Freedom Convoy protest, inadvertently highlighting the event’s joyousness and peacefulness. Of note, the final slide (bottom) shows a smiling Lich, Barber and fellow protester Mike Stack – while Barber’s dog Zippy enjoys the view from the driver’s seat of Barber’s truck “Big Red”.

And hilariously – as a close inspection reveals Barber’s dog Zippy sitting in Big Red’s driver’s seat, mouth agape in a wild doggy smile, looking down upon the trio as if to say, “Look at me. I’m driving the truck!” For a criminal case that threatens Lich and Barber with a decade in jail for allegedly imperilling the very foundation of public order across Canada, and has consumed more than a year of precious court time, Zippy’s photo-bomb doesn’t answer the question of guilt, it raises an entirely different one.

Is this really the best the Crown can do?

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Long-Haul Trucking

On January 23, 2022, the Freedom Convoy began rolling out from Canada’s West Coast towards Ottawa, while other smaller groups of vehicles streamed westward from Quebec and other points. Three months earlier, the Government of Canada had unexpectedly announced that cross-border truckers who had not received a course of Covid-19 vaccination would have to isolate for up to two weeks when crossing the U.S.-Canada border, overturning an earlier exemption for the trucking industry. Despite furious pushback, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to relent and the mandate came into effect on January 15.

‘What kind of country had Canada become?’ Lich would later write about the impact of mandatory vaccine requirements. ‘We had governments who seemed far more obsessed with promoting vaccines…than they did with the reality and the struggles of the Canadian people. Someone had to stop it.’

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In response, thousands of truckers and others in cars and pickup trucks from all over the country joined the procession to make their feelings known, while thousands more waved them on from freeway overpasses and small towns along the way. Lich and Barber were involved in this movement from the beginning – creating social media accounts, setting up fundraising efforts and building an internal support structure – although the convoy itself defied organization. Lich and Barber may have been instrumental, but they were not almighty.

Let those truckers roll, 10-4: In January 2022, thousands of vehicles from across the country converged on Ottawa to protest a dramatic change in the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccine policy for cross-border trucking. (Sources of photos: (top) Andrei Filippov/Shutterstock; (bottom) GoToVan, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Lich was born in Saskatoon to a Métis family and adopted as an infant. She has lived a varied life on the Prairies, working mainly as an administrator in the energy services sector and raising three children. She currently lives in Medicine Hat, Alberta with her husband Dwayne, who farms. She’s proud of her native heritage and also boasts of being a singer in a garage rock band. Lich has been politically active for many years, typically drawn to a robust defence of Western Canada’s political interests and consistently opposing the current Trudeau government. In 2018 she joined the “Yellow Vest” movement, and has also been a member of the Alberta Wildrose Party and the federal Maverick Party.

But it was the federal Liberals’ draconian response to the Covid-19 pandemic that pushed her activist inclinations into overdrive. “What kind of country had Canada become?” Lich would later write about the impact of vaccine mandates. “We had governments who seemed far more obsessed with promoting vaccines…than they did with the reality and the struggles of the Canadian people. Someone had to stop it.”

As for Barber, he hails from the small southwest Saskatchewan city of Swift Current. The 49-year-old married father of two children owns and operates a trucking firm, C.B. Trucking Limited, which specializes in long hauls of agricultural equipment. His popular TikTok account @bigred19755 provided him with a platform to complain – often impishly – about the impact of government regulation on the trucking business. As would be expected, the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic had a major impact on his business. Barber got the vaccine shots as required, but disagreed with how they were imposed.

By the time they got to Ottawa: Lich (left, with husband Dwayne) of Medicine Hat, Alberta, and Barber (right, with Big Red) of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, found themselves leading the Freedom Convoy as a result of their shared opposition to federal Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

“I was at risk of losing all that hard work [building my company] to not being able to cross the border anymore,” he explained to True North News. As his frustration with Covid-19 rules grew, Barber leveraged his status on social media to become a leading voice for truckers’ outrage over vaccine policy, which in turn spurred him to help launch the Freedom Convoy. “I was angry, very angry,” Barber later explained. “The provincial mandates, the federal mandates…it seemed like it was an over-reach.” From 30,000 followers prior to the convoy, Barber’s TikTok account grew to 170,000 by the time the truckers rolled into Ottawa.

When Lich, Barber and the rest of the original convoy reached Ottawa in late January, numerous other groups and individuals unaligned with the initial organization had joined the protest for their own reasons, and with their own objectives, timelines and standards of behaviour. What most participants had in common was a deep antipathy towards the Trudeau government and a desire to make this known in the heart of the nation’s capital. Their right to do so peacefully was initially acknowledged by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS). As they arrived, OPS officers met the truckers, showed them where to park and took steps to allow them to store provisions. For the first week or so, Lich and Barber worked closely with the cops to keep emergency routes open and relations cordial. This congenial situation eventually soured, however, as the protesters lingered.

Just over two weeks later, on February 14 the federal government took the unprecedented step of invoking the Emergencies Act based on the Liberal Cabinet’s assertion that the protest constituted a Canada-wide “public order emergency” that could not be dealt with under existing laws and which involved threats of “serious violence against persons or property.” This essentially criminalized the Freedom Convey and all its supporters. Riot police then moved to physically clear the protest area, and 196 protesters in the immediate area were arrested. Another 76 individuals were arrested elsewhere in Canada at around the same time for attending other protests, including blockades at three border crossings in Ontario, Manitoba and Alberta.

Crushing the “insurrection”: Initially accommodated by the Ottawa Police Service, the Freedom Convoy protest was later deemed a national “public order emergency”. Shown at top left, police circulate throughout the protest on February 9; top right, police hand out notices to protesters on February 17; at bottom, police confront and arrest protesters on February 18. (Sources of photos: (top left) The Canadian Press Images/Lars Hagberg; (top right) The Canadian Press/Justin Tang; (bottom left and right) Michel Elzo/Shutterstock)

The federal Liberals also bullied Canada’s chartered banks into freezing the bank accounts of many people connected to the protest. Lich and Barber had their personal finances locked and both were later arrested. Lich’s single, initial charge was for “counselling to commit the offence of mischief”; Barber was charged with counselling mischief, as well as obstruction and ignoring a court order. While half-a-dozen other charges were later added to the pair’s alleged offences, mischief was the common thread that connected them to the vast majority of other protesters arrested during the crackdown.

This prevalence of mischief seems a rather surprising fact. Amidst what was supposedly a massive and violent breakdown in public order, mischief – or counselling others to be mischievous – turned out to be the most serious crime the police could detect. In Ottawa there were no assaults, no murders, no guns or bombs, no fraud or extortion, no rioting and looting, no treason. Nothing, in other words, that might have signalled that an actual (as opposed to imagined or media-manufactured) insurrection was underway or imminent.

There was, however, one criminal act that provably did occur in Ottawa during the protests. Two men attempted to set an apartment building’s entryway alight and then sealed the doors shut. This appalling and dangerous act was immediately attributed by some to the protesters. Ottawa mayor Jim Watson, for example, stated it “clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city.” Police soon established, however, that the fire had no link to anyone connected to the Freedom Convoy.

Legal Mischief

While the term conjures up images of a misbehaving toddler, section 430 of the Criminal Code of Canada defines mischief very broadly as the willful destruction of property or interference with others’ lawful enjoyment of their own property. It should not be taken too lightly, cautions Michael Spratt, an Ottawa criminal lawyer. “Yes, mischief can be something very minor, for example drawing graffiti on a public space, or chalking a sidewalk,” Spratt says in an interview. “But mischief can also include very serious offences, for example, occupying and blockading the national capital and inflicting extreme harm on its residents, businesses, and communities.”

It seems doubtful the entirety of the chaos caused by the Freedom Convoy can be laid at the feet of Lich and Barber. Plenty of other participants deserve a large share of the blame, Velloso said, pointing especially to the police.

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As an indictable offence, mischief carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Since lawyers for Lich and Barber readily admit that mischief occurred during the protest, Spratt says the only legal issue to be decided in court is whether the pair were at fault “either as a party, a participant, an encourager, an abettor or a leader of the convoy who bears some responsibility for it.” In other words, Lich and Barber could be found guilty even if they didn’t commit any mischief themselves. That would, however, require crafting a rather elaborate theory to explain a rather mundane crime.

Not every legal observer is convinced mischief best fulfills the government’s claim that it was facing an incipient violent insurrection, as is required by the Emergencies Act. According to University of Ottawa law professor Joao Velloso, most mischief charges in Canada are actually quite minor and usually punished without any jail time. Reliance on what he, unlike Spratt, views as a rather insignificant crime as the means to punish Freedom Convoy protesters seems like “a safe, bureaucratic choice for the police,” Velloso explained to The Canadian Press, adding it is “a less demanding choice in terms of police work.”

Much ado about mischief: While Ottawa criminal lawyer Michael Spratt (left) says mischief can include “very serious charges”, University of Ottawa law professor Joao Velloso (right) observes that most mischief charges in Canada are minor and punished without any jail time. (Sources of photos: (left) Michael Spratt; (right) Errol McGihon/Saltwire)

Plus, it seems doubtful the entirety of the chaos caused by the Freedom Convoy can be laid at the feet of Lich and Barber. Plenty of other participants deserve a large share of the blame, Velloso said, pointing especially to the police. “The seriousness of the mischief during the protest was produced by lack of policing,” he asserted. This echoes the February 17, 2023 findings of the Public Order Emergency Commission chaired by Justice Paul Rouleau, which also concluded that “policing failures” – in particular, inviting the truckers into the downtown area without any long-term plan to remove them – “contributed to a situation that spun out of control.”

In deciding whether the mischief charges faced by Lich and Barber are a big deal or not, it helps to consider the fate of other Freedom Convoy protesters faced with the same charge, many of whom have been represented by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF). Steven Vardy, for example, was arrested while driving in downtown Ottawa after the Emergencies Act had been imposed and charged with obstruction. The charge of mischief was added after police discovered Vardy had narrated a video about the protest. The Crown dropped the obstruction charge before trial, and after two days in court the judge determined the mischief charge was equally untenable, and it too was dismissed.

Christine DeCaire, another JCCF client, was arrested while standing alone on Nicholas Street in downtown Ottawa as police moved to enforce the Emergencies Act on February 18. She was acquitted at trial, a result recently confirmed after the Crown appealed. JCCF client Ben Spicer was charged with mischief, obstruction and weapons offences after police grabbed him off the street during the protest and found a pocket knife and bear spray in his backpack. Spicer was then secretly recorded in a police van. After a six-day trial, all charges were dropped because he’d been arrested unlawfully. Evan Blackman, yet another JCCF client, was charged with mischief and obstruction, and had three bank accounts frozen. Drone footage later showed Blackman holding back protesters in order to de-escalate the situation. And just before he was arrested, he could be seen singing “O Canada”. The judge dismissed all charges after a one-day trial because of evidentiary weakness; the Crown is appealing.

Feeling mischievous: Police arrested 196 protesters in Ottawa after the Emergencies Act’s invocation, charging many with mischief and obstruction. Most had their charges later dropped or were found not guilty at trial, with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms playing a key role in these successful defences. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)

Not every mischief case has collapsed in calamitous fashion, however. Publicity-seeking protester Tyson “Freedom George” Billings, who was not represented by the JCCF and had no direct link to Lich or Barber, pleaded guilty to counselling others to commit mischief. The other charges against him were dropped and he was sentenced to time served, about four months. And Pat King, who also garnered ample attention during the protest, is still awaiting the verdict of his mischief trial, which lasted three weeks. King and Billings were notable for their confrontational and often uncooperative relationship with the police during the protest, in sharp contrast with Lich and, for the most part, Barber.

Another exception to the raft of failed cases is the fate of the so-called “Coutts Four”. Separately from the Ottawa protest, Chris Carbert, Anthony Olienick, Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin were among the most hard-line of hundreds of participants at a tense, weeks-long standoff at the Coutts, Alberta border crossing. On February 15 the four were arrested and charged with conspiracy to murder police officers as well as other weapons and mischief offences, upon which the whole protest disintegrated. Meanwhile, up to 100 other protesters at the site were charged with provincial regulatory offences.

Mischief ignored: The “Coutts Four” – (left to right) Chris Carbert, Anthony Olienick, Jerry Morin and Christopher Lysak – were found guilty of serious crimes arising from a tense blockade at the Coutts, Alberta border crossing. While Olienick and Carbert were also found guilty of mischief, their six-month sentences for this crime are to be served concurrently with their other, longer sentences. (Source of montage: CBC)

This past February, Lysak pled guilty to possession of a weapon in an unauthorized place and Morin pled guilty to conspiracy to traffic firearms – clearly serious offences, but a vast reduction from the potential life sentences they faced. Both were sentenced to time served. More recently, Olienick and Carbert each received sentences of six-and-a-half years for various weapons offences. As for their mischief charges, each received an additional six-month sentence to be served concurrently with the other, more serious convictions. Finally, an Alberta law firm recently announced that of nearly 50 clients facing provincial charges for participating in the Coutts border protest, all either had their cases dropped or resolved for a nominal fine of $1 each.

At this point, Lich and Barber appear to be the only remaining major participants from the entire national saga who are still available to punish.

“Prosecutorial Vendetta”

While outcomes have varied, a clear pattern emerges from a survey of mischief charges laid during the Emergencies Act. Most have been dismissed or returned with a not guilty verdict after only a few days in court. A few – such as Billings’ guilty plea – have resulted in a minor sentence befitting the minor character of the crime itself. For Olienick and Carbert, their guilty verdicts for mischief had no impact on their overall jail time; they faced much more serious charges, and their mischief was essentially ignored. And the mischief trial for Pat King, who is still awaiting his verdict, was completed in three weeks.

‘There is no question whatsoever that this is a political trial,’ Goldkind states emphatically in an interview.

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By comparison, the trial of Lich and Barber stretched into a 13-month epic, comprising 45 trial days. All for a collection of rather modest mischief and obstruction charges. Why would that be?

The answer, according to Ari Goldkind, a high-profile Toronto criminal defence lawyer, lies in the exact thing Wetscher tried so hard to wave away during her concluding statement: politics. “There is no question whatsoever that this is a political trial,” Goldkind states emphatically in an interview. For the Trudeau government to justify its suspension of Canadians’ civil liberties through the Emergencies Act requires an identifiable villain or two. Lich and Barber fit that bill. The length and unprecedented vigour with which the Crown has pursued the pair – Lich especially – as well as the manner in which the trial has dragged on, argues Goldkind, suggest there’s a “prosecutorial vendetta” against them.

“Prosecutorial vendetta”: Referring to Lich and Barber, high-profile Toronto criminal defence lawyer Ari Goldkind says, “There is no question whatsoever that this is a political trial.” (Source of photo: Lorenda Reddekopp/CBC)

When Lich herself arrived in Ottawa, the diminutive, then-49-year-old Métis grandmother quickly became the public “face” of the protest. At a February 3 press conference, for example, she was introduced as “the spark that lit this fire and the leader of this organization.” And while she claims in her book Hold the Line: My story from the heart of the Freedom Convoy that such a description “wasn’t accurate,” she nonetheless admits she filled a necessary role. “I guess I found a talent I didn’t know I had before,” she writes, speculating that her time spent on stage with her band might have prepared her for all the attention. “But I mostly feel like it was guided by God,” she adds.

While the Freedom Convoy was essentially ungovernable, comprised as it was of many disparate groups and publicity-seeking, independent-minded individuals, Lich tried her best to put her own calm and reasonable stamp on the proceedings. Throughout the protest, Lich’s efforts were observably peaceful and without any apparent mal intent. One of her first acts was to set up an independent group of accountants to handle the flood of donations financing the protest to prevent any suggestion of financial impropriety. In her dealings with the police, she always tried to find common ground – a fact readily acknowledged by police witnesses during the trial. Sergeant Jordan Blonde of the OPS protest liaison team, for example, noted in his testimony that Lich was always “polite” in his dealings with her, and that the protest itself was comprised of “many different groups and factions… [and] unattached people” who were not “aligned with anybody.”

In her own interactions with the protesters, over whom she had no real control, Lich repeatedly stressed the protest’s peaceful nature and worked tirelessly to rid the movement of disreputable or hateful characters. She even cobbled together a deal with Ottawa mayor Watson to move some trucks out of the downtown area; ironically, that deal went into effect on the same day as the Emergencies Act was invoked. As her lawyer Lawrence Greenspon observed in a brief courthouse lobby interview, “She is a genuine, very pleasant person, and almost a throwback to the peace-and-love days. She was preaching all along that ‘we only wanted a peaceful, non-violent demonstration.’”

“A throwback to the peace-and-love days”: According to her lawyer Lawrence Greenspon (at left centre, in barrister’s robe), Lich was a source of calm and grace throughout the protest and “only wanted a peaceful, non-violent demonstration.” (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Perhaps it’s this “peace-and-love” attitude that has provoked such spite towards her. Whatever the reason, the official animosity has been painfully obvious. While the physically-imposing Barber was released on bail less than 48-hours after his arrest, Lich spent 18 days awaiting bail. At her first bail hearing, Ontario Justice Julie Bourgeois claimed Lich posed such a risk to the “physical, mental and financial health and well-being” of the people of Ottawa that she denied her application outright. Only after a bail review hearing several weeks later was Lich finally released pending trial. As Goldkind points out, many extremely violent and/or repeat offenders in Canada spend no time at all in jail following their arrest. This, as many critics observe, is the result of the Liberals’ 2019 bail reform package widely derided as a “catch-and-release” policy; it apparently doesn’t apply to Lich.

When she was finally set free, Lich returned to Alberta saddled with a long list of bail conditions, including that she neither publicly support the protest nor have any contact with other protest organizers unless a lawyer is present. “After weeks of fighting for Canadians’ right[s] and freedoms, I was losing so many of mine,” she laments in Hold the Line. It was because of these efforts, however, that in June 2022 it was announced that Lich had been awarded the annual George Jonas Freedom Award, sponsored by the JCCF. Naturally enough she wanted to go to Toronto to accept the honour in person. But before she could, the Crown came after her yet again.

At her next bail hearing, the Crown argued that the decade of prison time Lich faced made her a flight risk and that she should be kept in jail until her trial was over – a move that would have resulted in several years of imprisonment, regardless of the verdict.

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At a court hearing necessitated by the award (since her bail conditions also banned her from setting foot in Ontario), Crown prosecutor Moiz Karimjee argued that simply by accepting the honour, Lich had violated the terms of her bail and should be locked up again. Such an absurdity was quickly brushed aside by the presiding judge, who ruled she could travel to Ontario to attend the celebration, provided she abided by the remainder of her bail restrictions. While there, however, Lich was photographed standing beside another convoy participant, Tom Marrazzo.

The fateful photo: When she went to Toronto to accept the 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award at a gala presentation, Lich was photographed beside fellow protester Tom Marrazzo (second from right) with lawyers standing just off-camera. This led to a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest and another 31 days in jail. (Source of photo: CBC)

As she recalls in her book, “Lawyers were standing just outside the frame” when the picture was snapped, in fulfilment of her bail conditions. No matter. When the lawyer-less picture began circulating on social media after she’d returned home, Karimjee issued a Canada-wide arrest warrant in her name. Two homicide detectives were then dispatched from Ottawa to pick Lich up in Medicine Hat; the two burly detectives slapped her in leg shackles for the trip to the Calgary airport. You can’t be too careful with grandmothers.

At her next bail hearing, the Crown argued that the decade of prison time Lich faced made her a flight risk and that she should be kept in jail until her trial was over – a move that would have resulted in several years of imprisonment, regardless of the verdict. To this request, Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman asked Karimjee if he could name a single mischief case in Canada that had resulted in a 10-year sentence. When Karimjee demurred, Goodman set Lich free once more.

In his ruling, Goodman offered his own expert opinion on the fate awaiting Lich. She “is charged with mischief and obstructing police-related offences, not sedition or inciting a riot,” the judge pointed out. “It is highly unlikely that this 49-year-old accused, with no prior criminal record and questions regarding her direct participation in the overall protests…would face a potentially lengthy term of imprisonment.”

Even if she’s found guilty, Goodman concluded, she’ll probably be sentenced to no more than time already served. All told, that amounts to 49 nights in jail. Says Goldkind: “That’s 49 nights longer in jail than someone who is caught driving three-times over the legal [alcohol] limit would likely face.” Had Karimjee gotten his way, however, she’d still be in jail – a term of 28 months and counting.

In an effort to explain the Crown’s extreme hostility towards her, Lich reveals in her book that prosecutor Karimjee has donated over $17,000 to the federal Liberal Party since 2013 and that his generosity has merited an invitation to at least one “donor appreciation” event with Trudeau himself. Similarly, Bourgeois, the judge who initially denied Lich bail, was once a Liberal candidate in an Ottawa-area riding during the 2011 federal election. In her journey through the courts to that point – a case the Crown argues is not political in any way – it was Karimjee and Bourgeoise, both with longstanding and very public Liberal sympathies, who had been the gatekeepers of a legal system intent on holding her to account for leading a massive political protest against the Liberal government. As Lich writes, “I didn’t stand a chance.”

“I didn’t stand a chance”: According to Lich’s book Hold the Line, Crown prosecutor Moiz Karimjee (top right) made substantial donations to the Liberal Party of Canada beginning in 2013, while the judge in her initial bail hearing, Justice Julie Bourgeois (bottom right), ran as a Liberal candidate in the 2011 federal election. (Sources of photo: (top right) True North; (bottom right) juliebourgeoisgpr/YouTube)

Part II of “Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber” will appear on November 5.

Lynne Cohen is a journalist and non-practicing lawyer in Ottawa. She has published four books, including the biography Let Right Be Done: The Life and Times of Bill Simpson.

Source of main image: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld.

C2C Journal

The Indigenous “Land Back” Movement: A Land Mine for Canadians

Published on October 26, 2024

Todayville

From the C2C Journal

By Michael Melanson

Amidst the litany of grievances levelled by Indigenous organizations it is easy to overlook the genuine progress made by some First Nations. Democratically elected native governments have negotiated additional rights, expanded their lands and gained control over natural resources and major projects, creating a sustainable economic base. But that apparently isn’t the course desired by a vocal subset of politically charged Indigenous North Americans. They’re unsatisfied with incremental progress or compromise. They are all grievance, all the time. And they want it all. Michael Melanson examines the emergence of the Indigenous “Land Back” concept, its evolution into militancy and potential violence, and its recent metastasis into some of the darkest crevices of the human psyche.

At a recent in-service for Manitoba teachers on the subject of Indigenous education, attendees were told by guest speaker Christopher Emdin that “resistance to colonialism is not terrorism” – the words splashed across a giant display screen. The American author and educational theorist was alluding to the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack against Israel, but he was also making a general statement about lands “occupied by settler colonialists” – i.e., ordinary non-Indigenous Canadians. Emdin had been hired because “settler colonialism” has become a source of pedagogical angst in the Winnipeg School Division. In trying to do its bit to effect Indigenous Reconciliation, the division – like others across Canada – has come to regard settler colonialism as the historic yet current oppressor. Emdin’s message conveyed an essential subtext: Indigenous people have a right to resist colonial occupation by any means necessary in order to get their land back.

Land Back is a political sentiment originating among Indigenous thinkers and activists in the United States that is now flourishing in Canada. Land Back is fundamentally revanchist: it seeks a return of lands considered to have been possessed by North American Indigenous peoples before contact with Europeans. As such, virtually all of North America can be regarded as former native territory if “possession” is defined loosely enough. It is difficult to characterize Land Back as a political movement because it lacks the associated cohesion and formal organization. Its core impulses are a combination of mysticism, grievance, aspiration and ideology. But its goals are unquestionably political – often fiercely so.

“Resistance to colonialism is not terrorism,” Christopher Emdin recently told a gathering of Winnipeg teachers; the American educational theorist was speaking in reference to Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 (right) but also as a general condemnation of “settler colonialism”. (Sources of photos: (left) The Brainwaves Video Anthology/YouTube; (right) AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Definitions of Land Back (also sometimes spelled Landback, LandBack or #LandBack) vary among professional and grassroots activists, opinion-leaders and other adherents. Jesse Wente, the journalist and current Chair of the Canada Council for the Arts, says Land Back is “about the decision-making power. It’s about self-determination for our Peoples here that should include some access to the territories and resources in a more equitable fashion, and for us to have control over how that actually looks.”

Ronald Gamblin, an Anishinaabe from Manitoba who is National Learning Community Coordinator of the 4Rs Youth Movement, states that the term “encompasses a complicated and intergenerational web of ideas/movements. When I hear Indigenous youth and land protectors chant ‘Land Back!’ at a rally, I know it can mean the literal restoration of land ownership. When grandmothers and knowledge keepers say it, I tend to think it means more the stewardship and protection of mother earth. When Indigenous political leaders say it, it often means comprehensive land claims and self-governing agreements.”

No single definition: Canadian arts journalist Jesse Wente (bottom left) describes Land Back as being “about the decision-making power”, while for Ronald Gamblin (bottom right) from 4Rs Youth Movement, the meaning depends on the person using it. Still others say it includes having the Sioux tribe gain control over the iconic U.S. Presidential Memorial at Mount Rushmore, South Dakota (top). (Sources of photos: (top) Dean Franklin, licensed under CC BY 2.0; (bottom left) Royal Ontario Museum/YouTube; (bottom right) 4Rs Youth Movement)

From its general beginnings around 2010 or even earlier, Land Back’s first explicit expression came in 2018, according to Wikipedia, when Arnell Tailfeathers, a member of the Blood Tribe in Alberta, used it in the protests demanding the reversion to Sioux tribal control of the world-famous U.S. Presidential Memorial at Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Versions of Land Back now are also found in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Mexico.

Though it is hard to pin down precisely – as the varying descriptions above make clear – generally speaking Land Back is a militant iteration of aboriginal nationalism. Proponents often disavow the legitimacy of Canada and the United States and frequently express hostility to their citizenry, whom they label “settler colonialists”. As in virtually all expressions of ethnic and racial nationalism, an autonomous sovereign territory is sought by some Land Back proponents.

This article on the website of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado (not to be confused with the High River, Alberta newspaper of the same name) attempts to instruct “white” readers in the Land Back movement’s virtues – and is therefore instructive in another way. It defines “land ownership” as merely a tactic “that keeps wealth and power in white families” (Hispanic and blacks apparently being uninterested in owning land), equates police with “violence”, lays essentially all of North America’s current ills at the feet of Europeans, suggests “Western colonizers” are “evil”, and talks about “so-called” civilization.

While the sentiments of Land Back are most commonly expressed at the populist levels of social media and public events, the initial success and popularity of early Land Back activists prompted composition of a formal manifesto in 2019: Land Back: A Yellowhead Institute Red Paper. It is written in the spirit of the 1970 Citizens Plus “Red Paper” by Harold Cardinal of the Indian Association of Alberta, which had been issued to angrily counter the Pierre Trudeau government’s preceding White Paper (formally, the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, 1969).

Although the 1969 White Paper recognized the clear problems arising from ‘the policy of treating Indian people as a race apart,’ it nonetheless did not call for the complete disassembly of the reserve system or the erasure of Indians’ separate status, but recommended something closer to what Quebec nationalists would later famously term ‘sovereignty-association’.

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The new Red Paper makes it clear that Land Back aims to rationalize aboriginal sovereignty and, as it states on page 48, assert “fulsome Indigenous jurisdiction”. The 65-page document proposes a radical departure from liberal-democratic norms. It seeks to override the non-Indigenous nation-state and privilege a minority on the basis of ethnic/racial origin. The authors appear well-aware of what they are doing. They seek to justify a cultural exception to our ostensibly universalist liberal-democratic creed by using the assimilationist caricature of the 1969 White Paper as their theoretical foil.

Despite being widely if not universally portrayed as such – including by the authors of both Red Papers – the 1969 White Paper was not in my opinion concerned about cultural assimilation, but actually sought a third alternative to Canada’s historically fluctuating and often contradictory Indian policies of segregation and assimilation. Unfortunately, the White Paper only vaguely outlined this third alternative, as in the following passage from page 13: “For many years Canadians believed the Indian people had but two choices: they could live [in effective segregation] in a reserve community, or they could be assimilated and lose their Indian identity. Today Canada has more to offer. There is a third choice – a full role in Canadian society and in the economy while retaining, strengthening and developing an Indian identity which preserves the good things of the past and helps Indian people to prosper and thrive.”

A 2019 official manifesto of Land Back activists (top left) advocates for “fulsome Indigenous jurisdiction” and a radical departure from Western liberal-democratic norms; their argument is based on a common critique of the Pierre Trudeau government’s 1969 Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian Policy, aka the White Paper (top right).

Although the White Paper recognized the clear problems arising from “the policy of treating Indian people as a race apart,” it nonetheless did not call for the complete disassembly of the reserve system or the erasure of Indians’ separate status, but recommended something closer to what Quebec nationalists would later famously term “sovereignty-association”. As the paper states: “Frustration is as great a handicap as a sense of grievance. True co-operation and participation can only come when the Indian people are controlling the land which makes up the reserves.”

The failure of the White Paper as a new policy direction resulted in a continuation of the frustration and grievance of the failed reserve system and, half a century later, Land Back activists like the Red Paper authors are trying to redeem the added years of misery. “Our times, too, are revolutionary,” the document states on page 6. “While tragically little has changed since 1968-1970, there are also emerging debates to reflect on and work through together. We continue to grapple with federal and provincial bureaucrats and/or industry on rights, title, and jurisdiction, but we are increasingly turning inward and are having productive conversations about what reclaiming land and water might look like, for all of us.”

“Citizens plus”: The 1970 “Red Paper” challenged the principles of universalism and racial equality, demanding special rights and thereby giving rise to the notion of “Indigenous exceptionalism”. Shown, Harold Cardinal (standing), 25-year-old leader of the Indian Association of Alberta, addresses Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and his cabinet during a Parliament Hill meeting, June 4, 1970. (Source of photo: CP PHOTO)

This is a disingenuous remark on the post-White Paper stasis, because that state of affairs was itself largely promulgated by the aboriginal nationalists of the day (and their white academic supporters), who fiercely denounced and resisted any civil reforms that might have resulted in Indians becoming like other citizens of Canada. This stance would have profound consequences.

The 1970s and 80s gave rise to the idea of Canada’s Indians becoming “citizens plus” – as the original Red Paper’s formal title suggested – meaning they would have the same rights as other citizens but also held additional rights by virtue of being aboriginal people. This is also when a notion of “Indigenous exceptionalism” arose and began to challenge the principle of universalism – the liberal-democratic ideal that every citizen should be equal and none should be discriminated against on the basis of race or ethnicity, and which had otherwise come to inform social and government policy in Canada. The great Mackenzie Valley Pipeline debate crystallized and amplified these elements, as well as birthing the Canadian version of the “decolonization” movement, as chronicled in this C2C article.

Forty-six years after Pierre Trudeau’s White Paper, his son was articulating just how far the idea of Indigenous exceptionalism had progressed in Canadian political discourse. During the 2015 federal election campaign, Justin Trudeau said that his government would “renew the nation-to-nation relationship with aboriginal people.” Then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper neglected to press Trudeau on just what he meant by that promise, unfortunately so, because it is a highly dubious statement. What nation-to-nation relationship, never mind what happened to it that necessitated renewal?

The relatively recent concept of universalism fundamentally rejects distinctions in law and governance on the basis of ancestry. The large exception being made for aboriginal people is based mainly on historical grievance: as the Indigenous people of Canada, they suffered from the colonization of their homelands by foreign nations and therefore deserve special considerations of redress.

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Land Back can thus be seen as an accelerant to that fuzzy notion of renewing intra-national relationships (given there are at least 630 First Nations, there are potentially hundreds of nation-to-nation relationships in need of renewal), something that would guarantee years if not decades of grinding political negotiations, with all the frustration, disappointment and anger that would surely entail, leading to still more strife. The new Red Paper’s authors suggest what this might mean when they hint at the inherent militancy of Land Back on page 56: “[Another], and perhaps more direct, type of assertion revolves around physical reclamation or occupation of lands and waters.” If negotiations fail, in other words, we have other tactics at the ready.

Gamblin is explicit about this: “When you look at it, as Indigenous peoples and nations, we come from the land. The land is our home, our mother, our caregiver, it’s what makes us Indigenous,” he writes on the 4Rs Youth Movement website. “Considering this, non-Indigenous folks need to understand that land back is about much more than land. You need to understand that when you hear youth scream ‘LAND BACK’, when you see land protectors stand off against the RCMP, when elders make prayers for the land, and when political figures sit in land negotiations, Land back is about Indigenous peoples confronting colonialism at the root. It’s about fighting for the right to our relationship with the earth. It’s about coming back to ourselves, as sovereign Indigenous Nations.”

The implications of “Indigenous exceptionalism”: Shown at top, graphic art recently posted to social media (at left) and spraypainted on a walkway (location unknown, at right) carrying violence-inciting messages; at bottom left, protesters unload a truck full of tires as they fortify a rail blockade in Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, Belleville, Ontario, February 2020; bottom right, Ontario Provincial Police arrest a protester at the same blockade. (Sources of photos: (top right) dav, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; (bottom left) The Canadian Press/Lars Hagberg; (bottom right) The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

The existential association of being with land has been common if not ubiquitous among Indigenous peoples worldwide throughout history. It has been widely romanticized and is typically regarded as essentially harmless, or at least understandable. But when viewed unsentimentally, it is clear that it is ethno-centric and exclusionary if not explicitly racist. In perhaps its worst expression, the Nazis harnessed this atavistic impulse in their racist doctrine of Blut und Boden (which means “blood and soil”): since they are from the land, they are of the land and, as such, have more right to the land than someone who came to this land from elsewhere.

The relatively recent concept of universalism fundamentally rejects distinctions in law and governance on the basis of ancestry. The large (and ever-growing) exception being made for aboriginal people is based mainly on historical grievance: as the Indigenous people of Canada, they suffered from the colonization of their homelands by foreign nations and therefore deserve special considerations of redress.

Turning again to Gamblin, who provides a routine example of this mindset. “The architects of Canadian colonial policy,” he writes, “knew that if they wanted access to the lands in order to generate wealth and power, that they would need to separate us from this relationship. So, they used tactics such as forced relocation away from our homes and onto reserves (Canada’s apartheid system), introduction of patriarchal governance (Indian Act Chiefs), starvation of traditional resources (such as buffalo massacres), breaking family units and knowledge transfer through Indian Residential Schools, targeting women and children with violent policies, limiting our access to on the land cultural practices, and even making it illegal for us to fight in the Canadian legal framework for stolen land. These were systematic tactics intended on destroying our relationship with our mother.”

Among the Canadian “colonial” government’s “systematic tactics intended on destroying our relationship with our mother”, Gamblin names “targeting women and children with violent policies” and “buffalo massacres”, yet verifiable historical facts contradict his accusations. Shown at top, Indigenous children receiving medical examination; at bottom, a pile of bison skulls in the United States, 1892. (Source of bottom photo: Burton Historical Collection/Detroit Public Library)

Space does not permit a thorough parsing of Gamblin’s litany of grievances, but none of what he writes should be taken at face value. Although superficially factual at first glance, each phrase is loaded with emotionally charged adjectives and adverbs, exaggerations or falsehoods. The intent appears to be to convince by sleight-of-hand and emotion rather than historical accuracy.

Two quick examples by way of illustration. First, to Gamblin’s accusation of “targeting women and children with violent policies”. Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, saw to it that every native Canadian was vaccinated against smallpox – in some cases, receiving inoculation even before the local white population. Second, “buffalo massacres” as a “systematic tactic” of “Canadian colonial policy”. It is established that well over 90 percent of the eradication of North America’s up to 50 million bison occurred in the United States. Of the rest, much of this was done by Indian and Métis buffalo hunters and, of that portion, nearly all of it took place before the newly formed Dominion of Canada gained legal control over the Prairies in 1870. The Government of Canada inherited a tragedy; it did not bring it about.

The new Red Paper’s academic tone is an exception to standard aboriginal activist discourse, but it too resorts to emotional hooks. “The stakes of these struggles are immense,” the authors state on page 64. “Of course, while Indigenous land and life are the focus here, the life of our species and of the planet are at risk from the type of economic philosophy and practices of (sic) perpetuated by colonialism and settler colonialism…So the matter of land back is not merely a matter of justice, rights or ‘reconciliation’; Indigenous jurisdiction can indeed help mitigate the loss of biodiversity and climate crisis…Canada – and states generally must listen.”

Having used decolonization ideology as a springboard to investing Indigenous-led solutions with the capacity to save the world, the Red Paper portrays the nation-state as posing a barrier to such an Indigenous-led global salvation. It portrays the UN as “an organization of states that first and foremost defends the territorial integrity of sovereign states,” which “means that states are the primary vehicle to address climate change and loss of biodiversity.” And so, the paper laments on page 65, “Even while the UN recognizes the harms states perpetuate against Indigenous people (including denying consent), they cannot imagine non-state Indigenous-led solutions that may threaten the state system.”

A global saviour in our midst: The Red Paper lays the blame for the world’s climate and biodiversity crises on settler-colonialism and calls for expanding the Land Back movement’s scope to one that offers “non-state Indigenous-led solutions” for the whole world. (Source of photo: Backbone Campaign, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The Red Paper authors appear to be suggesting that Indigenous organizations (to be determined) be given supra-jurisdictional authority. As grandiose and unrealistic as it sounds, it seems that they think aboriginal people should rule the world because they know what is best for the world and they know that because they are of the world in a way that non-Indigenous people are not; Mother Earth has given them her blessings as a birthright.

The continuing and in some ways worsening Indigenous/non-Indigenous dichotomy is a bane of humanity; it is antithetical to humanism because it presumes to determine who belongs here the most and who the least. If humanity matters most, it cannot matter who was here first. Some of the more sophisticated Indigenous exceptionalists are now staking their global campaign for jurisdiction on an issue of convenience: the fears of an existential peril – climate apocalypse – underpinned by the belief that they are somehow imbued with knowledge, skills and a force of origin that ordinary mortals do not possess. It is of course preposterous, and surely tempting to laugh off such presumption. But it needs to be taken seriously, for it is ultimately a mythos of race that justifies dominance of a sort that, in my view, has genuine and deeply disturbing parallels to Nazi “blood and soil” mysticism.

A new iteration of “Blood and Soil”? Land Back’s fundamental ethno-centrism mushrooms into overt racism among some of its extremist adherents, reminding the author of Nazism’s Blut und Boden doctrine, which held that only the racially pure local Volk had rights to the land. Shown at left, logo of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture; at right, farmers in Innsbruck, Austria wave swastika flags to salute German soldiers, March 1938. (Source of right photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-2005-0923-505, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 de)

Transposed to dullards and maladapts, the sentiments of Land Back become a surly revanchism that does not balk at the potential for barbarism. A disturbing number of Indigenous activists have, for example, come out in support of Hamas, grotesquely refashioning the October 7 atrocity as an act of decolonization. The Idle No More movement hosted a webinar barely a month after the massacre called “From Turtle Island To Palestine”, and a month after that Red Nation in the U.S. staged a teach-in on the same subject. “Palestine is actually doing a Land Back,” declared Sioux activist and academic Nick Estes, who spoke at both events. “They’re actually doing what we think we want to do but we haven’t gone there yet. Palestine is just doing it now…and for me, that was beautiful. I just want our resistance to be so strong, our fire as a people so strong that we just take back what is ours.”

Like Land Back, ‘decolonization’ is a term without fixed definition holding the potential to signify insurrection or violent, racially targeted civil strife. At the very least, in their ambiguous current states of definition, both are programs for which anyone with a chip on their shoulder can ‘write code’.

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Thankfully, there are courageous and notable Indigenous voices calling out such twisted opportunism. Noting that in Israel, it is Jews who are the Indigenous people, Chris Sankey, a businessman and former elected councillor of the Lax Kw Alaams Band near Prince Rupert, B.C., roundly condemned both the Hamas massacre and the attempt to distort its meaning to serve Canadian Indigenous activists’ decolonization agenda. “What has troubled me the most has been the frequency with which my peoples’ struggle for reconciliation has been invoked to justify the bloodshed, often by so-called ‘experts’ in the academy,” Sankey wrote in the National Post. “This is an absurd and, frankly, offensive comparison, as Indigenous-Canadians and Palestinians stand worlds apart.”

Like Land Back, “decolonization” is a term without fixed definition holding the potential to signify insurrection or violent, racially targeted civil strife. It can never be said often enough: “decolonization” is a foreign idea, developed in the context of wars of independence in Africa by trained Marxists who advocated organized violence from the start. It is itself hateful and racist.

Speaking in support of the Hamas atrocities, Sioux activist Nick Estes (top right) praised the Palestinian attackers for “doing a Land Back” and called for the same behaviour among his own people; Chris Sankey (bottom right), a member of the Tsimshian community of Lax Kw’ Alaams in northwest B.C., replies that “Indigenous-Canadians and Palestinians stand worlds apart.” Shown at bottom left, members of Samidoun (subsequently designated a terrorist organization) burn a Canadian flag on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery, October 7, 2024. (Sources of photos (clockwise starting top left): Appalachians Against Pipelines/Facebook; @nickwestes/X; Conservative Paty of British Columbia; Jarryd Jaeger)

At the very least, in their ambiguous current states of definition, both are programs for which anyone with a chip on their shoulder can “write code”. Some of those defining those terms are brooding nationalists informed by a colossal ledger of grievances against “settler colonialism” who are self-propelled with an existential sense of moral and mortal imperative and have come to regard themselves as a higher order of the human species. This is real: the Indigenous campaign to force the changing of the name of Powell River, B.C., has featured one aboriginal leader repeatedly referring to white Canadians as “subhuman”.

We should take caution. Between the pity, reverence and romanticization of Indigenous peoples and ways, there is a blind spot in which a ruthless racialist ideology can continue to grow.

Michael Melanson is a writer and tradesperson living in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Source of main image: The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette.

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