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C2C Journal

Parks Canada Tries to Cancel Sir John A. Macdonald in his Own Home

Published

3 months ago

28 minute read

From the C2C Journal

By Greg Piasetzki

“You can’t go home again,” American novelist Thomas Wolfe once wrote. Should the same advice apply to the home of Canada’s most important political personality? Greg Piasetzki first visited Bellevue House, one-time Kingston abode of Canada’s founding father Sir John A. Macdonald, when he was a university student in the 1970s. Now, following a controversial renovation of the site by Parks Canada that aims to tell “broader, more inclusive stories about Canada’s first prime minister” – a makeover that includes signs denouncing Macdonald as “a monster” in his own home – Piasetzki returns to Bellevue House to take the measure of the changes.

When my wife and I were students at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1978, we often spent our weekends enjoying the city’s many delightful amenities, including sailing on Lake Ontario and visiting local historic sites. Among the places we frequented was Bellevue House, the one-time home of Kingston’s most famous resident and Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.

Built in 1840 by a wealthy local merchant and rented to Macdonald and his wife Isabella in 1848-1849, the house is a striking example of the Italianate style of architecture that was new at the time and quickly became popular among the well-to-do. With expectations that Kingston might soon become the capital of Canada, the ambitious Macdonald settled into the glamourous residence as a recently-elected legislator for Canada West (present-day Ontario) in pre-Confederation Canada.

Bellevue House was the Kingston, Ontario home of Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, (top left) and his wife Isabella (top right) in the 1840s; it was later purchased by the federal government ahead of Canada’s 1967 Centennial and designated a National Historic Site in 1995. At bottom, the house circa 1891. (Source of bottom photo: Courtesy of Agnes Etherington Art Centre)

It was not a happy time for the young family, unfortunately. The rent on the house was beyond their modest means and their first son, John Jr., died there as an infant. The Macdonalds left Bellevue House shortly afterwards. The house remained a private residence until the federal government purchased it in 1964 and turned it into an historic park as part of Canada’s 1967 Centennial celebrations; it was designated a national historic site in 1995. When we first visited, Bellevue House looked every one of its 138 years.

Despite its fascinating backstory, Bellevue House in 1978 was a rather dreary experience. There was no bright and airy visitor centre on the grounds to welcome guests, as there is now. The house itself was poorly lit and signage inside said little about Macdonald or his many accomplishments. (Perhaps because most visitors learned all about him in school.) Several of the upstairs rooms were closed to the public and the washrooms were located in a grim basement. The surrounding gardens were also quite spartan. Visitors mostly came to admire the architecture and period furnishings (or what they could make out in the gloom) and pay homage to Canada’s founding father.

Major renovations were carried out in the 1980s, including construction of a reception centre where the carriage house used to be. Two upstairs rooms were re-opened as period bedrooms and the basement was returned to its original role as a scullery; the public washrooms were moved to the new visitor centre. Despite the improvements, however, the house’s aging infrastructure – floors, wiring, roof, and so on – remained largely untouched and slowly rotted away during the ensuing years.

Given the impressive modernization effort, Bellevue House is arguably in better shape today than when it was first built.

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In 2012, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dramatically reduced Parks Canada funding as part of its plan to return the federal budget to balance. Along with many other historic sites across the country, Bellevue House had its opening hours and staff sharply reduced. Necessary structural repairs were also put off. By 2017 it was in such bad shape that it was closed year-round. This past May it was finally reopened to the public. According to Parks Canada, which oversees Canada’s historic sites, the “extensive renewal” of Bellevue House now “tells broader, more inclusive stories about Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald.” It’s a good news/bad news situation.

“Extensive renewal”: Bellevue House was closed in 2017 due to its deteriorating condition; Parks Canada re-opened it to the public in May 2024 following a comprehensive modernization project. Shown, Bellevue House undergoing repairs in 2020. (Source of photo: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook)

 

 

First the Good News

This summer my wife and I returned to Bellevue House for the first time since our student days. We are pleased to report it looks fantastic. The new stucco, moulding, panelling, paint and roof work have the place literally gleaming. The gardens have been enlarged and are now well-suited to a leisurely ramble. A spacious parking area has also been added since we last visited. The well-lit rooms are packed with decorative and practical articles from Macdonald’s era. And a team of eager young staff seem well-informed and keen to engage with visitors, although they’ll leave you alone if you prefer to wander at your own pace.

Given the impressive modernization effort, Bellevue House is arguably in better shape today than when it was first built. And that is important. While Macdonald’s short stay at Bellevue House was not a particularly happy one, the building itself is clearly part of Canada’s political and historical heritage. It certainly has a stronger claim on our patrimony than the many colonial-era inns throughout New England that boast “George Washington once slept here” have on America’s past. As Canada’s most important historical figure, part of Macdonald’s legacy is embodied in this house. And now it has been returned to the state of its glory days in the 1840s when Kingston was a city of destiny and Macdonald a young politician on the move. That alone is a very good thing.

This old house looks great: The renovations of Bellevue House have transformed the structure into a beautiful representation of upper-class living in pre-Confederation Canada. Clockwise from top left: the visitor centre, Parks Canada staff in period garb, the dining room and the parlour. (Sources of photos: (top and bottom left) Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook; (bottom right) Dan Taekema/CBC)

Then the Bad News

Unfortunately, Bellevue House has become yet another battlefield in the federal Liberal’s war against what are sneeringly referred to as “dead white males” and the alleged evils of colonialism. As such, it reflects the lamentable decline in historical competency throughout Parks Canada’s portfolio. Bellevue House further reveals the apparent requirement under the Justin Trudeau government’s sweeping policy of “reconciliation” that Indigenous opinion be inserted into all possible government activities and institutions, regardless of relevancy or accuracy. As such, no opportunity is missed to paint our first prime minister in as unfavourable a light as possible. The goal, it appears, is to cancel Macdonald in his own house. This makes for a rather odd visitor experience.

After making one’s way through the welcome centre, guests are confronted with a variety of messages along the path to Bellevue House. Purportedly garnered from comments by earlier visitors, the messages range from entirely factual, such as, “We wouldn’t have Canada without him,” to the deliberately unsetting “He was a monster.” Without any context for this commentary, visitors – and especially impressionable young schoolchildren – will quickly figure out which responses comprise the “proper” view of the man.

The bad news: In keeping with the Justin Trudeau government’s apparent mission to denigrate and erase important figures from Canada’s colonial history, a sign on the path to Bellevue House claims Macdonald was a “monster”. (Source of photo: Dan Taekema/CBC)

The federal government’s plan to tell “broader and more inclusive stories” about Macdonald is as subtle as a sledgehammer. According to its opening-day press release, Parks Canada “formed working groups with Indigenous partners, culturally diverse members of Kingston and area communities…to share stories and develop new exhibit content.” Native Canadians may have plenty of stories to tell about Macdonald (although no Indigenous person alive today knew Macdonald personally or had any direct experience of him). But are they historically true and relevant to his time at Bellevue?

As visitors make their way through the house, they will notice nearly every room has some sort of aboriginal artifact on display. Some additions are modest and easily overlooked. On the main floor, for example, a dining room filled with Victorian-era dishes, candelabra and other knick-knacks also holds a side table with a collection of indigenous herbs such as sweetgrass, tobacco and sage; there are also books of native art on the shelves. It seems unlikely any of this would have been here when Macdonald rented the house. Then again, nearly all the items on display have no direct connection to Macdonald.

Upstairs the mood turns far more serious. A nursery with cradle (possibly the only authentic Macdonald artifact in the entire house) evokes a somber mood given the death of John Jr. On display in the same room, however, is a cradleboard used to secure an aboriginal infant to her mother’s back. And on the walls are excerpts from Macdonald’s speeches in the House of Commons promoting residential schools as the means to assimilate native children into Canadian society.

Repeat after me, colonialism, genocide and racism: Bellevue House is incongruously filled with numerous Indigenous artifacts and informational displays that attack or undermine Macdonald’s many great accomplishments. (Source of photo: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook)

The obvious goal is to remind visitors of the impact residential schools had on aboriginal children in the very bedroom where Macdonald’s own child died. If visitors still don’t get the message, a video screen blares out interviews with residential school “survivors” on an endless loop. Children as young as four-years old, guests are informed, were forcibly removed from their families and sent to such schools, perpetrating “violent assimilation and abuse”. We are meant to have no sympathy for Macdonald’s own tragic loss.

In other second floor rooms, informative panels variously describe Macdonald the man, the politician and nation builder. These achievements – saving the Canadian colonies from being swallowed up by the United States, bringing them together into Confederation and binding the country with a transcontinental railway, among other feats of statesmanship – will be familiar to anyone who has read one of the many biographies of Macdonald, including Richard Gwyn’s magnificent two-volume work.

But wherever Macdonald’s very real achievements are mentioned, they are always married with some sort of attack on his policies, personal character or the era in which he lived. Besides residential schools, this includes the starvation of Indigenous tribes on the Prairies in the 1890s, the Chinese head tax and on and on. “His vision for Canada did not include everyone,” states one sign, deliberately undercutting his commitment to Canadian democracy. A lexicon helpfully defines key terms visitors will encounter repeatedly throughout the house: colonialism, genocide, racism et cetera.

“Stories” in Abundance, Truth in Short Supply

At Bellevue House’s reopening ceremonies in May, Rodrick Donald Maracle, Chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, exclaimed, “Macdonald supported oppression of Indigenous Peoples’ identity; their language, spirituality, the places they came from were stripped from them…The new exhibits at Bellevue House provide a place where truths about Macdonald are able to be fully discussed.”

Parks Canada controls the narrative by choosing which ‘facts’ to present and which to omit. Indeed, it deliberately misses numerous opportunities to provide visitors with crucial ‘non-biased’ facts about Macdonald’s actual accomplishments and beliefs.

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Maracle’s unrestrained antipathy towards Macdonald is clearly the prime example of the “broader and more inclusive stories” Parks Canada wants Bellevue House to tell. Despite its explicit mandate to “protect and present nationally significant examples of Canada’s natural and cultural heritage and foster public understanding,” Parks Canada makes no effort to let visitors know which stories are legitimate and which are pure fiction.

In an interview with a travel writer for The Globe and Mail, Tamara van Dyk, Bellevue’s Visitor Experience Manager, said, “We can’t tell [visitors] how to feel about this history. But we can help them to understand this history…we share facts, non-biased facts.” This is a transparent cop-out; Parks Canada controls the narrative by choosing which “facts” to present and which to omit. Indeed, it deliberately misses numerous opportunities to provide visitors with crucial “non-biased” facts about Macdonald’s actual accomplishments and beliefs. (The Globe article is also noteworthy for its grotesque error in claiming the “confirmation, in 2021, of hundreds of unmarked graves discovered on the grounds of Canada’s residential schools.” There was never any such “confirmation” and, where excavations at suspected grave sites have been subsequently performed, no human remains have been unearthed.)

Controlling the narrative: Rodrick Donald Maracle, Chief of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte, used the re-opening ceremonies at Bellevue House to declare that “Macdonald supported oppression of Indigenous Peoples’ identity.”

Among the ample exculpatory evidence about Macdonald missing from Bellevue House’s numerous information plaques and displays is that most Indigenous students during Macdonald’s era went to day schools, not residential schools. Further, between 1891, when Macdonald died, and 1950, half of all residential school students dropped out after grade 1, hardly indicative of a program of “violent assimilation”. Children at residential schools were also sent home to their parents for a two-month summer holiday every year and, if practical, for the Christmas and Easter holidays as well. These facts – verifiable and true – are entirely inconsistent with the suggestion Macdonald deliberately plotted genocide, cultural or otherwise.

Also unmentioned is the Macdonald government’s extremely successful smallpox vaccination campaign for native Canadians. Over a period of more than 20 years, the Government of Canada sought to inoculate every Indigenous resident. Some natives were inoculated twice and, in at least one instance, a group of natives received their shots before local white residents did. If genocide was Macdonald’s goal, why go to such trouble to save so many Indigenous people from disease?

Similarly, despite the surfeit of Indigenous content in nearly every room, no mention is ever made of Macdonald’s many friendships with prominent aboriginal Canadians. This includes Oronhyatekha (aka Burning Cloud), a member of the Six Nations Confederacy who attended the Mohawk Institute Residential School and later graduated from the universities of Toronto and Oxford. Oronhyatekha campaigned for Macdonald in the 1872 election and later named his first child after him.

Despite the surfeit of Indigenous content in Bellevue House, there is no mention of Macdonald’s friendship with several prominent aboriginal Canadians, including Oronhyatekha, aka Burning Cloud (left) and Kahkewaquonaby, aka Peter Jones (right). Both earned university degrees (Oronhyatekha also attended a residential school) and played significant roles in Macdonald’s political campaigns.

Another close contact was Kahkewaquonaby (aka Peter Jones), the head chief of the Mississauga of New Credit, who received his medical degree from Queen’s University in 1866 and acted as a political organizer for Macdonald. He was also consulted on changes to the federal Electoral Franchise Act in 1885, an effort by Macdonald to give all native Canadians the vote, but which was stymied by his political opponents.

As to the Chinese head tax, the historical record shows Macdonald was a consistent foe of the idea; his instincts were always to defend minority rights. It was his political adversaries, largely anti-immigrant nativists in British Columbia, who forced Macdonald’s hand on the matter. When head tax proponents first demanded a $100-per-person tax, he appointed a Commission that countered with a very modest $10. And while Macdonald’s government eventually settled on $50, the tax had no appreciable impact on Chinese immigration. It was Macdonald’s Liberal successor, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, who hiked it to an unaffordable $500, effectively shutting down Chinese immigration for many years.

The Summing Up

Parks Canada’s revitalization of Bellevue House presents an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution to the debate about Macdonald’s place in our country’s history at a time when his reputation has come under assault from many sides. Clearly, this effort is not entirely successful. A magnificent renovation and modernization project has been marred by decolonization faddism. But is the good of its physical make-over outweighed by the bad of the historical nonsense?

Putting myself in a judge’s seat and based on my experiences at the property in 1978 and today, I find the changes to Bellevue House are, on balance, a benefit to Canada. The haphazard insertion of Indigenous artifacts in the room displays and the validation of untrue or hopelessly biased “stories” about Macdonald is certainly disconcerting and distracting at times. Yet many of these additions are so irrelevant or harmless – the native herbs in the dining room, a red ribbon dress in Macdonald’s own dressing room – that the visitor can easily disregard them.

Bellevue House ought to be seen as a physical manifestation of Macdonald and his enduring importance to Canada. And that alone is reason for hope.

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Other additions are harder to overlook: a sign proclaiming Canada’s first prime minister to have been a monster, the video and audio barrage inside the house as well as the repeated efforts at undercutting Macdonald’s many political accomplishments. Every room upstairs makes some claim to this effect. And while initially grating, over time it all becomes rather silly. What calumny will they come up with next? The cumulative effect is so incongruous and contextually out-of-place that eventually one becomes numb to it – the way our brains tune out an unpleasant smell. And having done that, all that’s left is the house itself: a magnificent example of colonial-era British Canada.

Parks Canada’s attempted cancellation of Macdonald in his own residence was always an absurd mission. Unlike the erasure of his name from various schools or other buildings and landmarks across the country, or the toppling of his statues, Bellevue House has not been removed as a physical presence. It still stands. Remember, the only reason Ottawa owns the house in the first place and then spent so long fixing it up is, as its national historic site designation states, because “it is associated with Sir John A. Macdonald, a Father of Confederation and Canada’s first Prime Minister.” Visitors to the site are not drawn there by a desire to learn more about his personal flaws or to view a random collection of Indigenous bits and pieces. Rather the magnetic force is and always has been Macdonald’s own unparalleled significance as a national figure. And with most of these actual historical achievements given at least grudging acknowledgement throughout the house, any discerning visitor should be able to separate the numerous grains of truth from the vast bushels of chaff.

For all time: Macdonald’s significance as Canada’s pre-eminent statesman is what draws visitors to Bellevue House. And this record of achievement is sturdy enough to survive any attempt to cancel him, even by the current federal government. Shown, Macdonald, standing at centre, in Robert Harris’ famous painting Fathers of Confederation, circa 1884. 

Bellevue House ought to be seen as a physical manifestation of Macdonald and his enduring importance to Canada. And that alone is reason for hope. Given the quality and scale of the renovations, the site will easily outlast our current Liberal government and, one can assume, society’s recent ahistorical convulsions as well. Video screens, red dresses and wall plaques are easily removed. But the house itself is going no where. After many perilous and grim years, Bellevue House is back better than ever. The same will eventually hold true for Macdonald himself. Cultural fads and social hysterics come and go, but his legacy – the legacy of Canada as an improbable country that became one of the world’s most successful and stable democracies – is here to stay. Like his house, it just needs a little sprucing up.

Greg Piasetzki is an intellectual property lawyer with an interest in Canadian history. He lives in Toronto and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario.

Source of main image: Bellevue House National Historic Site/Facebook.

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C2C Journal

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

Published on November 16, 2024

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From the C2C Journal

By Robert Lyman
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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.

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C2C Journal

Drinking by the Numbers: What Statistics Canada Doesn’t Want You to Know

Published on November 15, 2024

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From the C2C Journal

By Peter Shawn Taylor
“The secret language of statistics, so appealing in a fact-minded culture, is employed to sensationalize, inflate, confuse, and oversimplify,” cautioned journalist Darrell Huff in his famous 1954 book How to Lie with Statistics. It’s still useful advice, although Canadians might hope such a warning isn’t required for the work of Statistics Canada. In an exclusive C2C investigation, Peter Shawn Taylor takes apart a recent Statcan study to reveal its use of controversial, woke and unscientific methods to confuse what should be the straightforward task of reporting on the drinking habits of Canadians in various demographic groups. He also uncovers data the statistical agency wants to keep hidden for reasons of “historical/cultural or other contexts”.

Statistics Canada would like to know how much you’ve been drinking.

In October, the federal statistical agency released “A snapshot of alcohol consumption levels in Canada” based on its large-scale 2023 Canadian Community Health Survey that asked Canadians how much they drank in the previous week. The topline number: more than half of those surveyed – 54.4 percent – said they didn’t touch a drop in the past seven days. This is considered “no risk” according to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction’s (CCSA) 2023 report Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health, which Statcan uses as its standard. Among those who did imbibe, 15.2 percent said they’d had one or two drinks in the last week, an amount the CCSA guidance considers “low risk”, 15.2 percent said they’d consumed between three and six drinks, considered by CCSA to be “moderate risk”, and the remaining 15.1 percent admitted to seven or more drinks per week, what the CCSA calls “increasingly high risk”.

Statcan then sliced this information several different ways. By gender, men reported being bigger drinkers than women, based on their relative share in the “high risk” category (19.3 percent versus 11.1 percent). By age, the biggest drinkers are those 55-64 years, with 17.4 percent consuming at least one drink per day. Perhaps surprisingly, the 18-22-year-old college-aged group reported the lowest level of “high risk” drinking across all ages, at 8.4 percent, an outcome consistent with other observations that younger generations are becoming more conservative.

Statcan’s data also reveals that Quebeckers are the biggest drinkers in the country with 18.1 percent in the “high risk” category, while Saskatchewan and New Brunswick had the greatest number of teetotalers. Rural residents are bigger drinkers than those living in urban areas. By occupation, those holding male-dominated jobs in the trades, equipment operation and transportation were the most likely to report drinking in the “high risk” category of seven or more per week. Finally, the richest Canadians – those in the top income quintile – said they drink more than Canadians in lower income quintiles, an outcome that seems logical given the cost of a bottle these days.

The demographic detail in Statcan’s alcohol consumption survey is extensive and largely in keeping with general stereotypes. The quintessential drinker appears to be a middle-aged blue-collar male living in rural Quebec. (Although the report notes an enormous discrepancy between self-reported consumption data and national alcohol sales, with self-reported amounts accounting for a mere one-third of actual product sold. This suggests many Canadians are far from truthful when describing how much they drink.)

Despite the apparent surfeit of information, however, several demographic categories are missing from Statistics Canada’s report. And not by accident. According to a “Note to readers” at the bottom of the October report, the survey “included a strategic oversample to improve coverage…for racialized groups, Indigenous people, and persons with disabilities. While this analysis does not contain results for these populations (primarily owing to the need to delve into historical/cultural or other contexts for these groups as it pertains to alcohol consumption), the Canadian Community Health Survey 2023 data is now available to aid researchers looking into health analysis for these populations.”

The demographic detail in Statcan’s alcohol consumption survey is extensive and largely in keeping with general stereotypes. The quintessential drinker appears to be a middle-aged blue-collar male living in rural Quebec.

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The upshot of this word salad: Statcan went to extra lengths to get high-quality information on the alcohol consumption of natives, visible minorities, immigrants and people with disabilities. And then it enshrouded these numbers in a cloak of secrecy, choosing not to release that information publicly because of “historical/cultural or other contexts”. Why is Canada’s statistical agency keeping some of its data hidden?

Canada’s Guidance on Alcohol and Health

Before investigating the missing data, it is necessary to discuss a controversy regarding the alcohol consumption guidelines used by Statcan. As mentioned earlier, its survey is based on new CCSA standards released last year which consider seven or more drinks per week to be “increasingly high risk”. This is the result of recent CCSA research that claims “even a small amount of alcohol can be damaging to health.” By focusing on the incidence of several obscure cancers and other diseases associated with alcohol consumption, the CCSA recommends that Canadians cut back drastically on their drinking. For those who wish to be in the “low risk” group, the CCSA recommends no more than two drinks per week for men and women, and not downing both on the same day.

To your health: The “J-Curve” plots the well-documented relationship between moderate social drinking and a long lifespan, revealing the healthiest level to be around one drink per day, what the new CCSA standards call “high risk”.

Such a parsimonious attitude towards drinking is at sharp odds with earlier CCSA findings. In 2011, the CCSA released “Canada’s Low Risk Alcohol Guidelines”, which defined “low risk” drinking levels very differently. Under this older standard, Canadians were advised to limit their consumption to 15 drinks per week (10 for women) and no more than three per day. It also acknowledged that it was okay to indulge on special occasions, such as birthdays or New Year’s Eve, without fear of any long-term health effects.

These rules were based on ample medical evidence pointing to substantial health benefits arising from moderate drinking, given that social drinkers tend to live longer than both abstainers and alcoholics – a statistical result that, when placed on a graph, yields what is commonly referred to as the “J-Curve”. These rules also aligned with social norms and hence garnered broad public support.

The dramatic contrast between the 2011 and 2023 CCSA drinking guidelines has attracted strong criticism from many health experts. Dan Malleck is chair of the Department of Health Sciences at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, as well as director of the school’s Centre for Canadian Studies. In an interview, he bluntly calls the new CCSA guidelines “not useful, except as an example of public health over-reach.” Malleck argues the emphasis CCSA now places on the tiny risk of certain cancers associated with alcohol ignores the vast amount of evidence proving moderate drinking confers both physical and social advantages. This, he says, does a disservice to Canadians.

“The opposite of good public health advice”: According to Dan Malleck, chair of Brock University’s Department of Health Sciences, the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse and Addiction’s (CCSA) 2023 guidelines suggesting alcohol in any amount is a health hazard are unrealistic. (Source of photo: Brock University)

“The Opposite of Good Public Health Advice”

“There are two possible responses” to the CCSA’s new drinking guidelines touting near-abstinence as the preferred course of action, Malleck says. “People will hear the message that no amount of drinking is healthy and simply ignore the recommendations altogether because they’re so restrictive – and so we end up with no effective guidance. Or they’ll take it all at face value and become fearful that having just two beers a week will give them cancer. Creating that sort of anxiety isn’t useful either.” Considering the two alternatives, Malleck says the end result “is the opposite of good public health advice.”

Perhaps surprisingly, it appears Ottawa agrees with this assessment. While the CCSA is a federally-funded research organization, it is not a branch of the civil service. As such, its work does not automatically come with an official imprimatur. Rather, its reports have to be adopted by Health Canada or another department to become government policy. This was the case with its 2011 guidance. It is not the case with CCSA’s new report.

In response to a query from C2C, Yuval Daniel, director of communications for Ya’ara Saks, the federal minister of Mental Health and Addictions, stated that, “The Canadian Centre for Substance Abuse and Addiction’s proposed guidelines have not been adopted by the Government of Canada. Canada’s 2011 low-risk alcohol drinking guidelines remain the official guidance.”

Too strict even for the Liberals: Federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister Ya’ara Saks has chosen not to adopt the CCSA’s 2023 drinking guidelines as official policy – yet Statistics Canada insists on using them to measure Canadians’ drinking habits. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

It seems the CCSA’s new and abstemious drinking guidelines are too strict even for the federal Liberals. The 2011 standard, which considers anything up to 15 drinks per week to be “low risk”, remains the government’s official advice to Canadians. While this seems like a small victory for common sense, it raises another question: if the federal government has refused to adopt the strict 2023 CCSA drinking standards, why is Statcan using them in its research?

According to Malleck, the appearance of the new, unofficial CCSA alcohol guidance in Statcan’s work “legitimizes” the explicitly-unapproved guidelines. “It further reinforces these seemingly authoritative, government-funded recommendations” and obscures the sensible, official advice contained in the earlier guidelines, he says. It seems a strange state of affairs. But given other odd aspects of Statcan’s alcohol survey, it is in keeping with an emerging pattern of problematic behaviour at the statistical agency. Statcan is no longer merely gathering information and presenting it in an objective way, to be applied as its users see fit; the agency appears to be crafting its own public policy by stealth.

Uncovering the Missing Data

Recall that Statcan’s recent alcohol survey withheld consumption data regarding racial, Indigenous and disabled status for reasons of “historical/cultural or other contexts”. Although the statistical agency collected the relevant numbers, it then restricted access to researchers “looking into health analysis for these populations.” As a media organization, C2C requested this data on the grounds it was public information. After some back-and-forth that included the threat of a $95-per-hour charge to assemble the figures, Statcan eventually provided the once-redacted numbers for free. With the data in hand, it seems obvious which numbers were withheld and why.

The only category that seems worthy of any comment is that of Indigenous Canadians. At 20.1 percent, aboriginals display one of the highest shares of ‘high risk’ drinkers in the country.

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Nothing about alcohol consumption by immigrant status or race appears newsworthy. Immigrants are revealed to be very modest drinkers, with 68 percent reporting no alcohol consumed in the past week, and only 7 percent admitting to being in the “high risk” seven-drinks-per-week category. Similar results hold for race; Arab and Filipino populations, for example, display extremely high rates of abstinence, at 88 percent and 80 percent, respectively. Disabled Canadians are also very modest drinkers.

The only category that seems worthy of any comment is that of Indigenous Canadians. At 20.1 percent, aboriginals display one of the highest shares of “high risk” drinkers in the country.

Out of sight, out of mind: Statcan’s recent report on alcohol consumption deliberately withholds data on Indigenous Canadians for reasons of “historical/cultural and other contexts”. (Source of photo: AP Photo/William Lauer, File)

According to Malleck, Statcan’s reference to “historical/cultural or other contexts” in withholding some drinking data is a clear signal the move was meant to avoid bringing attention to Indigenous people and their problematic relationship with alcohol. “A lot of people will now err on the side of caution when it comes to this kind of information [about Indigenous people],” he says. This is a phenomenon that has been building for some time. Nearly a decade ago, the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action made numerous demands about how governments and universities deal with Indigenous knowledge and history. “I can see the people at Statcan saying that this [new data] will play into the so-called ‘firewater myth’ and be too damaging culturally to justify its inclusion,” Malleck adds.

“The Unmentioned Demon”

It is certainly true that Canada’s native population has been greatly damaged by alcohol since the beginning of white settlement in North America. As early as 1713 the Hudson’s Bay Company told its staff at Fort Albany, in what is now northern Ontario, to “Trade as little brandy as possible to the Indians, we being informed it has destroyed several of them.”

Later, the pre-Confederation era featured many legislative efforts to limit native access to alcoholic spirits. Further, one of the purposes behind the creation of Canada’s North West Mounted Police (NWMP) was to interdict American whiskey traders at the U.S. border to prevent them from selling their wares to Canadian tribes, who were suffering catastrophically under alcohol. The NWMP were notably successful in that mission, earning the fervent gratitude of prominent Indigenous chiefs on the Prairies. More recently, the topic of alcoholism on native reserves has been the subject of several books, including former Saskatchewan Crown prosecutor Harold Johnson’s powerful 2016 work Firewater: How Alcohol is Killing my People (and Yours).

Canada’s native community has struggled with alcohol abuse ever since white settlement began. Many federal policies have attempted to address this, including the creation of Canada’s North West Mounted Police (NWMP) in 1873. Shown, NWMP officer with members of the Blackfoot First Nation outside Fort Calgary, 1878.

With all this as background, it should not come as a surprise that Indigenous communities continue to struggle with high rates of alcohol use and abuse. In fact, such detail is easily accessible from other government sources. The federal First Nations Information Governance Centre, for example, reveals that the rate of binge drinking (five drinks or more in a day, at least once per month) among Indigenous Canadians is more than twice the rate of the general population – 34.9 percent vs. 15.6 percent. Reserves and Inuit communities also display extremely high rates of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder(FASD), which is caused when pregnant mothers drink. Some research shows FASD rates are 10 to 100 times higher among Indigenous populations than the general Canadian population. This C2C story calls FASD “the unmentioned demon that haunts the native experience throughout Canada.”

Given all this readily available information, it makes little sense for Statcan to collect and then withhold data about Indigenous drinking. Such an effort will not make the problem go away, nor change public perceptions. Indeed, the only way to reduce alcoholism on reserves and among urban native communities is to confront the situation head-on. The first step in Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step recovery program is, notably, admitting to the existence of the problem itself.

With regard to sensitivity about identity, Statcan showed no qualms about labelling Quebeckers as being the thirstiest drinkers in the country. Or that men employed in the trades, equipment operation and transportation tend to kick back with a beer more than twice a week. Further, Indigenous Canadians are not even the country’s biggest imbibers. That distinction belongs to the top quintile of income-earners, with 21.5 percent of Canada’s highest earners in the “high risk” category.

Habs fans at work: While Statcan appears unwilling to publish data revealing that Indigenous Canadians are among the biggest drinkers in Canada, it has no such qualms about identifying Quebec as Canada’s thirstiest province. (Source of photo: CTV News Montreal)

This effort to spare Indigenous Canadians the ignominy of being recognized as among the country’s biggest drinkers, even after devoting more time and effort to researching their habits, follows a 2021 federal Liberal directive that requires Statcan to spend more resources on certain targeted groups. The $172 million, five-year Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), which is referenced in the alcohol report’s footnotes, is an effort to collect more detailed data about Indigenous people, women, visible minorities and the disabled “to allow for intersectional analyses, and support government and societal efforts to address known inequities and promote fair and inclusive decision-making.”

Setting aside the tedious terminology of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) movement, it may well be a reasonable policy goal to collect more and better information about underprivileged groups. With better information comes greater knowledge and, it can be hoped, an improved ability to plan. But such efforts are for naught if this additional data is then hidden from public view because it might cast favoured groups in a bad light.

Ottawa’s $172 million Disaggregated Data Action Plan (DDAP), unveiled in 2021, is meant to collect and distribute more detailed data on targeted groups including women, Indigenous people and the disabled. It doesn’t always work as promised.

Canada’s Statistical Agency Goes Random

The apparent data damage arising from the new DDAP is not limited to hiding results about Indigenous Canadians. It is also affecting results by gender. Recall that the October alcohol consumption report reveals a clear male/female split in drinking habits, with men drinking substantially more than women. On closer inspection, however, this distinction refers only to self-reported gender identity – not to biological sex. As a result of a separate 2018 directive, the statistical agency is now forbidden from asking Canadians about their sex “assigned” at birth.

This is in keeping with woke ideology favoured by the federal Liberals that regards gender as a social construct separate from biology. But such a policy entails several significant problems from a statistical point of view. For starters, it makes it difficult to compare results with previous years, when gender was defined differently. According to Statcan, this is no big deal: “Historical comparability with previous years is not in itself a valid reason to be asking sex at birth.” These days, ideology matters more than statistical relevance, even to those who once held sacred the objective gathering of high-quality data.

As its work becomes more overtly political and ideological following nearly a decade under the Justin Trudeau government, Statistics Canada is endangering its own reputation as a reliable and impartial source of data.

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This new policy also means that in situations where biological sex is crucial to interpreting the data – health issues, for example – the results are now muddied by the conflation of gender with sex. This is particularly relevant when it comes to self-identified transgender or non-binary individuals. In following the new rules set out by the DDAP, Statcan now takes all transgender and non-binary responses and shuffles them arbitrarily between the male and female categories – what have since been renamed as Men+ and Women+. As Statcan itself reports, this data is “derived by randomly distributing non-binary people into the Men+ or Women+ category; data on sex at birth is not used in any steps of this process.”

Anti-scientific: As a result of the DDAP, Statcan now randomly distributes responses from people who self-identify as transgender or non-binary into its Men+ and Women+ categories, making a mockery of good statistical practice. (Source of photo: Shutterstock)

In other words, Statcan is now randomly allocating the responses it receives from anyone who says they are transgender or non-binary into the Men+ and Women+ categories. Transgender women who remain biological men may thus be included together with other biological women. Doing so is, of course, entirely unscientific. Randomizing data points that have been carefully collected undermines the entire statistical process and weakens the usefulness of any results. Taken to the extreme, such a policy could produce such medical data absurdities as rising rates of prostate cancer among Women+ or a baby boom birthed by Men+. Consider it a triumph of wokeness over basic science and math.

Statistical Irrelevance in Three Easy Steps

As its work becomes more overtly political and ideological following nearly a decade under the Justin Trudeau government, Statistics Canada is endangering its own reputation as a reliable and impartial source of data. The October survey on alcohol consumption contains three examples of this lamentable slide into incoherence which, if not halted promptly, will lead to growing irrelevance.

First is the presentation of controversial new CCSA alcohol consumption guidelines as an official standard by which Canadians should measure their alcohol use. In fact, these guidelines have no federal standing whatsoever; the actual official standards are much more permissive. It is not clear why Statcan would promote these unofficial and scientifically dubious recommendations. In effect, the agency has teamed up with a temperance-minded organization that seems determined to convince Canadians they are drinking too much booze.

This party can’t last forever: Statcan’s recent survey on Canadians’ drinking habits reveals the many ways in which the statistical agency is becoming increasingly ideological in how it collects (and hides) data. If left unchecked, this will eventually lead to its irrelevance as a source of reliable information. (Source of photo: CanadaVisit.org)

Second, Statcan wants to prevent Canadians from having ready access to information about alcohol consumption by Indigenous Canadians. This may be the result of some misconstrued sense of sympathy or obligation towards native groups. In doing so, however, the statistical agency is hiding an important public policy imperative from the rest of the country. It should be the job of Canada’s statistical agency to collect and distribute high-quality data that is relevant to the Canadian condition regardless of whether the resulting inferences are for good or ill. While the $172 million DDAP program was promoted as the means to shine a brighter light on issues of concern for marginalized groups, it now appears to be working in reverse – hiding from public view issues that should concern all Canadians.

Finally, Statcan’s gender-based data collection policy is doing similar damage – and could do vastly more in the future as long-term datasets become ever-more degraded. Also based on the Liberals’ Disaggregated Data Action Plan, the agency now collects responses from Canadians who identify as transgender and non-binary and then randomly allocates these between its Men+ and Women+ categories, undermining the quality and reliability of its own work. While the actual numbers for nonbinary Canadians may be perishingly small, such a flaw should be a big deal for anyone who cares about rigorous statistical validity. And surely Statistics Canada should care.

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

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