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The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: How to Read Between the Lies

Published

2 months ago

43 minute read

From the C2C Journal

By Peter Shawn Taylor

“Environmental racism” is frequently tossed about Canadian society these days. But what does it actually mean? It’s not about favouring white spruce trees over black spruce trees. Rather, it involves the twisting of basic economic principles into a vicious, politically loaded accusation. The same sense of confusion is sown with other linguistic tricks such as “organizational elder abuse”, “excessive net profits”, “renovictions” and “stakeholder capitalism”. As left-wing politicians and activists seek to redefine fundamental economic and financial concepts as malign forces and to recast socialist objectives as free-market values, Peter Shawn Taylor offers puzzled readers a practical guide to navigating the etymological fog.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

—Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic; they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.” That is how Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who miraculously survived Hitler’s Germany, described the Nazi regime’s manipulation of words and their meaning in his 1957 book The Language of the Third Reich. The endless public repetition of fascist idioms and phrases regarding race, duty and country, Klemperer argued, turned the German population into unthinking servants of the Nazi cause.

The approach in the Soviet Union was different in tactics but no less destructive. “Total power over the Word gives the Master of the Word a magical power over all communications,” wrote Russian historian Mikhail Heller in his 1988 book Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man. By using fear and intimidation to control what its citizens could say, the Communist regime was able to control what they thought as well. “The Soviet language became the most important means of preventing people from acquiring more knowledge than the state wished,” explained Heller.

The power of words: As Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer described in his book The Language of the Third Reich, the endless repetition of Nazi slogans and idioms about race and duty turned the German people into unthinking automatons in service to Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime.

Western democracies crushed Nazism and then faced down the Soviet Empire through intense military and economic competition as well as the promise of freedom. Today, however, these forces of linguistic control are again being wielded by propagandists embedded deep within our own society. It is now common for words to be assigned meanings that either signify the opposite of what they once did, or are bastardized in some way as to be unmoored from any permanent or coherent definition. And always with political purpose.

The redefinition of sex as socially-constructed gender and the creation of a multiplicity of gender identities – enforced by intense institutional pressure but lacking any scientific evidence or logic – is just one example of this destructive wordplay. The poisonous concept of “anti-racism”, which has become cover for the implementation of many explicitly racist policies, is another.

What were once benign notions of markets, entrepreneurship and the free exchange of ideas, goods and services have been corrupted and/or smeared by the left.

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As Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt recently pointed out in the National Post, a blizzard of new terms has been invented to remove the concept of personal responsibility from all public discourse. The homeless, once “vagrants”, are now referred to as “the unsheltered”, the free distribution of harmful illegal drugs has become “harm reduction”, and self-administered drug overdoses have been rebranded as “accidental poisonings”.

Everyone’s a victim. As Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt (bottom) has pointed out, current terminology regarding drug use erases any sense of personal responsibility; the free distribution of harmful illegal drugs is now called “harm reduction” and self-administered overdoses are “accidental poisonings”. (Sources of photos: (top) Ted’s photos – Stand With Ukraine, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; (bottom) Christopher Dummitt)

The underlying purpose, Dummitt explains, is ideological. “The intention is clear: to remove stigma and any overt suggestion of personal responsibility,” he wrote. “The new names are meant to reorient our thinking so that we understand that the real causes of misfortune to be societal or systemic. If a word has shameful connotations, that seems to be enough to warrant change.”

The same conceptual reorganization is at play with how Canadians discuss fundamental economic and intellectual concepts as well. What were once benign notions of markets, entrepreneurship and the free exchange of ideas, goods and services have been corrupted and/or smeared by the left in the same way that personal responsibility has been erased from public conversations through the appearance of new words and meanings for drug use and other individual failings.

With this damaging process threatening the very conception of private property and individual economic freedom, C2C Journal has curated a list of 11 terms currently being used propagandistically by the left. It includes long-established words redefined in deliberately unsettling ways and tired old socialist objectives disguised as market-friendly innovations as well as some outright fabrications. We call this our “Anti-Capitalist Dictionary”. Each word or phrase listed below is introduced with an example of its typical current usage (that is to say, its misusage), along with the source of the example, and then a discussion/deconstruction of its flaws. Finally, we offer a truthful alternative to use in its place. As they say, forewarned is forearmed.

Child Care Deserts

Typical usage: “Saskatchewan has the highest proportion of children living in child care deserts by far.”

—Not Done Yet: $10-a-day child care requires addressing Canada’s child care deserts, by David MacDonald and Martha Friendly, May 2023

A “child care desert” refers to an area that is said to be short of daycare spaces. And while the federal government’s heavily subsidized, $10 per day child care program was promoted as the means to create a jungle of new spaces at a phenomenally low cost, Canada appears strangely awash in “deserts” as parents everywhere complain about a worsening shortage of spaces. Among child care advocates, this situation is cause for even greater government spending (or “investment” as they misleadingly put it). The desert must be defeated!

A self-inflicted “desert”: The dire shortage of childcare spaces across Canada is largely the result of federal policies that forbid or curtail the participation of for-profit centres in Ottawa’s $10 per day child care program. (Sources of photo: Global News)

As previous C2C Journal articles have shown, however, this rampant desertification is a direct result of a federal plan that explicitly discriminates against for-profit daycare providers. In many provinces, private operators deliver the majority of child care spaces. If the goal is to boost the supply of practically anything, the private sector is nearly always nimbler and more cost-effective than the public or non-profit sectors. For this reason, Ottawa’s attack on private child care providers is doing great harm to parents. It’s no coincidence that Saskatchewan is the Sahara of Canada’s child care deserts; it also has the nation’s lowest share of for-profit child care. By treating Canada’s child care shortages as some sort of external force of nature – one that only governments can withstand and conquer – child care activists are deliberately ignoring the importance of private capital and entrepreneurship to the daycare ecosystem.

Accurate alternative: “An absence of private sector supply.”

Denialism

Typical usage: “Residential school denialists employ an array of rhetorical arguments. The end game of denialism is to obscure truth about Canada’s Indian Residential School system in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.”

—Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism, by Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton, University of British Columbia website

“Denialism” is frequently used as a slur against anyone who questions an established narrative. Most recently it has been applied to those who challenge claims that Canada’s Indian Residential School system was a deliberate program of genocide. But it also serves to advance numerous other ideological agendas. For example, Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, Ontario well-known for his rigorous, science-based approach to climate change, notes that he’s often denounced as a “denialist” when he uses evidence to point out holes in accepted green energy policy orthodoxy. This includes revealing the true (and often astronomical) cost of policies to “fight” climate change.

Sticks and stones: For his science-based criticism of green energy policies, Ross McKitrick (left), an economist at the University of Guelph, is frequently tarred with claims he is a “denialist” by opponents unwilling to debate him on the merits of his arguments. (Sources: (left screenshot) Bridge City News/YouTube; (right photo) powerofgreatbarrierreef, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

“The facts are clearly on one side, but if you stand up and point this out, you get called a denier,” McKitrick says in an interview. The insult’s impact is intensified by the fact the term originally stems from denial of the Holocaust. Observes McKitrick: “Opponents are thus treating you like a psychology case, rather than engaging with you on the merits of your argument.” It is a thoroughly nasty dodge for activists who are unprepared to defend their own position. Asked whether he has a preferred term for someone who questions established beliefs from a fact-based perspective, McKitrick suggests, somewhat wryly, “glorious truth-teller.” That works for us.

Accurate alternative: “Glorious truth-telling.”

Environmental Racism

Typical usage: “Environmental racism is a direct by-product of colonialism.”

—Fast Talk on Environmental Racism in Canada, Canadian Human Rights Commission, February 16, 2023

“Environmental racism” is a deliberately provocative term invented to explain why low-income individuals and families tend to live in less desirable (and hence cheaper) neighbourhoods or areas. Given that black and Indigenous families have a greater likelihood of having low incomes than other groups, this outcome is now declared racist.

Prior to the modern-day habit of labelling every situation of unequal outcomes in this way, such a scenario was known to economists as Ricardian land rents, after 19th century British economist David Ricardo. It was Ricardo’s insight that the price of land is determined by its most productive use. If land on the outskirts of town or nearer a pulp mill is less desirable or less productive than land in a city’s downtown core or beside a lake, then it will also be cheaper – and thus more affordable for people with lower incomes.

Cheap room for rent: As 19th century British economist David Ricardo (left) first explained, the price of land is determined by its most productive use, which is why low-income families tend to live in less desirable – and less expensive – neighbourhoods. (Source of right photo: Shutterstock)

“Most people don’t want to live adjacent to heavy industry et cetera, so people with lower incomes tend to move into those areas,” economist McKitrick observes. But calling this process environmental racism “gets the cause and effect backwards,” he says. There is no prejudice at work; low-income people moving to cheaper areas is simply a demonstration of the market at work.

Accurate alternative: “Cheap land means cheap rent.”

Equity

Typical Usage: “Equity: the principle of considering people’s unique experiences and differing situations, and ensuring they have access to the resources and opportunities that are necessary for them to attain just outcomes. Equity aims to eliminate disparities and disproportions that are rooted in historical and contemporary injustices and oppression.”

—Guide on Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, Government of Canada, 2022

Words turned upside-down: As Wilfrid Laurier University finance professor William McNally points out, “equity” as currently practiced on campuses entails deliberate unfairness towards certain groups. The same linguistic inversion has occurred with the related terms “diversity” and “inclusion”.

Not that long ago, equity was defined as “the quality of being impartial; fairness,” as a desk copy of the 1988 Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language explains. More recently, however, this definition has been turned on its head. “Equity”, as currently employed by governments, activists and other woke-infected institutions, entails the deliberately unequal  treatment of individuals in order to fabricate uniform outcomes between groups. Instead of being fair to all job candidates, for example, equity now requires that individual applicants be treated very differently based on group membership or characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, gender or disability.

“My own school is a great example of this inherent unfairness,” says William McNally, a business professor at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business and Economics in Waterloo, Ontario and an outspoken critic of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. “We now have teaching positions that are only available to black or Indigenous applicants. Whites are not allowed to apply,” he says in an interview. By suppressing or even abandoning the key criterion of individual merit, the school’s hiring process is being manipulated to achieve a particular, ideologically-driven outcome that is unfair to most potential candidates. In similar fashion, McNally observes, diversity has come to mean “people who look differently, but all think the same.” And inclusion now means the deliberate exclusion of many qualified candidates.

Accurate alternative: “Blatant favouritism.”

Excessive Net Profits

Typical Usage: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada consider implementing policies to effectively tackle excessive net profits in monopolistic and oligopolistic sectors in the food supply chain, which are driving up prices for consumers.”

—Report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, House of Commons, May 2024

A recent House of Commons Agriculture and Agri-Food subcommittee report on food prices concocted the phrase “excessive net profits” to attack grocery companies. While politically useful, given popular concern over rising food costs, it betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge about accounting and prices. It is redundant to refer to “net profits”, as profits are already calculated on a net basis. If the intent is to examine some share of those profits, the term unhelpfully fails to indicate which items should be netted out.

Villainizing the retailer: A recent House of Commons subcommittee blamed food inflation on the “excessive net profits” of food stores. In fact, grocery retailer Loblaws’ profit margin is a measly 3.4 percent. (Source of photo: BlogTO)

As for the concept of what constitutes an excessive level of profits, that is an entirely subjective matter beyond the ken of any subcommittee. The profit margin (net earnings divided by gross revenue) at Loblaw Companies Ltd., the corporation at the centre of today’s political ire about food inflation, is a measly 3.4 percent, based on its most recent financial statements. By way of comparison, the profit margin at online retailer Amazon is a robust 9.1 percent, while at computer chip manufacturer Nvidia it’s an eye-popping 55 percent. How excessive is that? With store-bought food inflation peaking at 11.4 percent in 2023, the rising cost of food would be a problem for Canadians even if Loblaw operated on a break-even basis.

By misidentifying the problem of profits, the Liberal-dominated subcommittee promotes the socialistic notion that government has a legitimate role in setting prices and establishing an appropriate level of income across industries. As the devastating effects of rent controls on the supply of rental housing readily illustrate, this is complete folly. Profit is the essential inducement for entrepreneurs to provide needed goods and services. And rising profits in a given industry or in the production of a given good or service signal that there is opportunity for additional profitable competition; this, in turn, brings prices back down. Canada is already experiencing a productivity crisis driven by a lack of capital and investment in productivity-enhancing machinery; telling entrepreneurs there is a government-mandated upper limit on their profitability will only exacerbate this potentially catastrophic problem.

Accurate alternative: “There is no competition without profit.”

Financialization

Typical usage: “The financialization of housing is recognized as a trend that is undermining the realization of the right to adequate housing.”

—The Financialization of Housing: A Summary Report for the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, by Martine August, June 2022

What used to be known as ready access to capital – and considered a good thing – has been ominously relabeled as “financialization”, and become the all-purpose boogeyman of Canada’s housing crisis. Rather than pointing to the obvious imbalance between constrained housing construction and soaring demand caused by runaway immigration, the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (FHA) repeatedly claims that housing-industry investors seeking to earn a return on their capital are the true cause of Canada’s housing affordability crisis. And the FHA’s solution is to eliminate the profit motive from the housing supply by advocating for a government/regulatory takeover of the industry which would make it impossible for entrepreneurs to survive.

The boogeyman of the housing industry: According to the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, “financialization” is to blame for Canada’s current housing crisis, and the solution is to eliminate entrepreneurs and profit from the entire sector. (Source of photo: Colin N. Perkel/Shutterstock)

The fight against financialization also has the FHA demanding that Ottawa erase any tax benefits associated with real estate investment trusts (REITs). Such a policy, as an EY consultancy report (link requires signing in) found, would “slow growth in the supply of available rental units” and thus worsen the housing crisis. Despite an earlier promise to stamp out financialization, however, Ottawa recently promised not to levy any new taxes on REITs. This was a rare wise move by Ottawa on housing policy. Canada requires more investors, more real estate developers and more property managers. Without the enormous financial resources and deep expertise of motivated real estate investors, including REITs, it will be impossible to meet the country’s need for 3.5 million new homes by 2030.

Accurate alternative: “Building a lot of homes requires a lot of money.”

Living Wage

Typical usage: “The living wage is a bare-bones calculation that looks at the amount that a family of four needs to earn to meet their expenses.”

—Living Wage for Families BC website

Promoted by social advocacy groups as a replacement for the minimum wage, a “living wage” is always much higher than the legal minimum since it is intended to allow a sole earner to support a family not merely with bread on the table and a roof over their heads, but with other amenities such as holidays, a savings account and a gift budget. In other words, it is intended to provide a single-income household with a middle-class lifestyle.

Yet research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business shows that only 1.5 percent of minimum-wage earners are single parents with a child to support. Presumably, even fewer comprise a 1950s-style nuclear family with one wage-earner and one stay-at-home parent. The vast majority of minimum-wage earners are actually under 25 and living with their parents. Accordingly, replacing current minimum wages with a living wage of $25 per hour or more will not make life better for struggling families. Rather, it will harm the economy’s youngest and least employable workers by making them too expensive to hire. A better approach can be found in Alberta, where the minimum wage for workers under 18 years is two dollars less per hour than for adults, reflecting their lower productivity and greater need for training.

A tiny sliver of the pie: According to research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a mere 1.5 percent of minimum wage earners support a child, while 59 percent live at home with their parents. The imposition of a universal – and much higher – “living wage” would thus price many unskilled teenagers out of the workforce.

“Living wage” is also an example of the left’s frequent linguistic tactic of framing market-based alternatives to their favoured policies as despicable, if not deadly. What is the opposite of a living wage? It must be a death wage.

Accurate alternative: “Youth-employment-reducing wage.”

Organizational Elder Abuse

Typical usage: “Lions Housing Centres and the Lions Club of Winnipeg have been accused of inflicting ‘organizational elder abuse’ on seniors because of the way they sold Lions Place to a for-profit real estate company in 2023.”

— “Tenants of former Lions Place victims of ‘organizational elder abuse’: report” by Kevin Rollason, Winnipeg Free Press, April 23, 2024

This phrase appears to have been invented by the left-wing lobby group Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in a report on the sale of a Winnipeg seniors’ home run by the Lions Club, a charitable organization, to a private firm earlier this year. A Betrayal of Trust: Exploring the Financialization of Lions Place in Winnipeg as a Case of Organizational Elder Abuse offers no evidence that residents of the home have been mistreated in any way. Rather, the mere fact that the new owner, Mainstreet Equities, intends to make a profit while continuing to operate the facility amounts to “elder abuse” in the CCPA’s eyes. (Note that the report also makes use of the bogus term “financialization” for a twofer of leftist linguistic misdirection.)

Inventing abuse: The recent sale of a seniors’ home in Winnipeg was declared “organizational elder abuse” by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, reflecting the left-wing view that making a profit while delivering care is somehow illegal or immoral. (Source of photo: Josh Crabb/CBC)

“Organizational elder abuse” is an insult to the entire private sector and reminiscent of campaigns that seek to banish for-profit operators from other sectors dominated by high-cost, inefficient public-sector unions, such as health care and child care. The fact that actual elder abuse is a criminal act promotes the left-wing notion that even the most basic economic function of earning a profit is somehow illegal or immoral.

Wordplay aside, the private sector has a critical and successful role to play in the provision of assisted-living and long-term care for seniors in a number of provinces, as this and this C2C article described. And, judging by the long waiting lists for obtaining residency in many of these centres, seniors generally like what these companies are offering.

Accurate alternative: “Asset sold by a motivated seller to a willing buyer.”

Renoviction/Demoviction

Typical usage: “Renoviction is a huge source of housing loss.”

—Ontario Renoviction Report 2024, ACORN Canada, February 2024

So far, the anti-capitalist terms evaluated have employed real English words that can be compared to their ordinary, historical or technical meanings. Here, we encounter complete gibberish. “Renoviction” or “demoviction” are portmanteaus  invented to describe the situation in which a landlord evicts existing tenants in order to clear the way for a substantial renovation to an apartment that can then be re-let at higher rent, or tears down the entire building to put up something new, again to generate greater revenue.

Why not let it rot instead? While renovations improve the local housing stock, some cities would rather stand in the way of progress and have passed renoviction bylaws preventing landlords from removing tenants in order to fix up their apartments.

While these processes are perfectly legal under certain conditions – and wholly understandable given the need for constant housing renewal – they have lately become nasty insults used by housing advocates and politicians to denigrate landlords generally. Some cities are even enacting bylaws to prevent both practices, erasing landlords’ property rights as owners and putting tenants in control of buildings they do not own. Such policies will clearly discourage further investment in housing at a time when the country desperately needs more and better houses. Investing one’s own money to improve the local stock of housing was once considered a good thing for everyone. Today, however, some politicians would rather let it all rot. The solution lies in recognizing landlords as the best-situated and most-effective custodians of the country’s rental stock.

Accurate alternative: “Improving Canada’s housing stock at no cost to taxpayers.”

Responsible Investing/Sustainable Investing/Impact Investing

Typical usage: “Responsible investment (RI) refers to the incorporation of environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) into the selection and management of investments. RI has boomed in recent years as investors have recognized the opportunity for better risk-adjusted returns, while at the same time, contributing to important social and environmental issues.”

—Responsible Investment Association website

“Responsible”, “sustainable” or “impact” investing holds that investors should weigh a variety of non-financial goals when choosing where to put their money. The goal is to “do good” with one’s investments by, for example, choosing green energy firms over those in the oil and natural gas sector. But adding moralistic objectives to one’s investment mix is “delusional”, writes Aswath Damodaran, a widely-respected guru of financial valuation at the Stern Business School at New York University. It is also another example of the twisted language of ideologically-driven alternatives, similar to “living wage” as discussed above. Having identified a practice as “responsible” investing, all other forms of investing – every stock, every bond, every mutual fund, every holding in every pensioner’s retirement fund – must implicitly be irresponsible.

More like “irresponsible” investing: Financial valuation expert Aswath Damodaran of New York University’s Stern Business School considers the inclusion of environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals as part of “responsible” or “sustainable” investing to be “delusional”, because of the additional costs and losses it imposes on investors.

While the vast majority of impact investors believe their ESG-flavoured decisions are costless – that is, have no effect on their overall investment returns – diverting their focus away from financial performance inevitably lowers returns because it constrains the list of potential investment opportunities, as Damodaran points out. It also leads investors to tolerate inefficiency and costly diversions among the “sustainable” companies they favour. As Damodaran observes, “After 15 years and trillions invested in its name, impact investing, as practiced now, has made little progress on the social and environmental problems that it purports to solve.” As he concludes, “Is it not time to try something different?” Pushback against these investment techniques is well underway in the U.S., and just beginning in Canada.

Accurate alternative: “Making less money while doing no good.”

Stakeholder Capitalism

Typical usage: “Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism.”

—The Power of Capitalism, by Larry Fink, 2022 letter to Blackrock shareholders

Popularized by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, “stakeholder capitalism” involves corporations making decisions that may go against the best interests of their shareholders by pursuing the interests of other groups – or “stakeholders” – such as government regulators, community activists, fashionable global causes or the public at large. This can include accommodating the demands of organizations explicitly hostile to the company and its industry, as well as a multiplicity of other targets comprising social and environmental indicators unrelated to the firm’s core business. Climate-related “Net Zero” commitments by various corporations are an obvious current example.

“Under stakeholder capitalism, CEOs and boards are supposed to weigh all these different competing interests,” says Laurier finance professor McNally in an interview. “But they get to choose which ones – it could be gender equity or decarbonization or racial social justice. And this is a profoundly undemocratic process. The shareholders who actually own the company don’t have any say in it.” Not surprisingly, these corporate fetishes rarely come cheap, and there is evidence that stakeholder-focused companies earn lower returns than good old-fashioned shareholder-driven ones.

Spending someone else’s money: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (left) noted in a 1970 New York Times essay, so-called “stakeholder” capitalism – subordinating shareholders’ rights in favour of other interests – is tantamount to theft. At right, activists protest Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting. (Source of right photo: Rainforest Action Network, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

For the alternative viewpoint, McNally points to a famous 1970 New York Times essay by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. In it, Friedman argued that executives who allow political or social justice interests to distract them from pursuing their shareholders’ best interests – above all, safeguarding their capital – are “spending someone else’s money” on pet projects and should be considered guilty of theft. Nonetheless, advocates such as Fink are now promoting stakeholder capitalism – what Friedman called “pure and unadulterated socialism” – as the only true form of capitalism. It is a complete inversion of reality.

Accurate alternative: “Playing politics with other people’s money.”

Conclusion

The above list is obviously not exhaustive. Indeed, it is barely a beginning. The primary purpose of the Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is to remind readers that words matter and alert them to the widespread presence of corrupted, concocted or bogus terms in general usage. Calling wind turbines “green” or “sustainable” energy, to mention some additional possible entries, not only engenders positive feelings among many people, but influences their thinking about what these things actually are and how they work. It is thus useful that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, for example, now refers to wind and solar power as – entirely accurately – “intermittent and unreliable”. This draws attention to the fact they cannot be relied upon to serve as base-load power in the way that nuclear, natural gas-fired or hydroelectric facilities can and do. There is nothing sustainable about an energy source that cannot be trusted when needed.

Having identified a practice as ‘responsible’ investing, all other forms of investing – every stock, every bond, every mutual fund, every holding in every pensioner’s retirement fund – must implicitly be irresponsible.

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Beyond these specific examples, the Anti-Capitalist Dictionary’s other purpose is to reveal the damage being done to fundamental economic concepts that are crucial to the flourishing of a democratic society. It has been proven time and again throughout history (and often at great cost) that markets – the free and open exchange of ideas, goods or services – are the best and most efficient method of determining values, assessing needs and allocating resources. Today, however, as in totalitarian regimes of the past, we are witnessing a determined effort to replace time-proven market mechanisms with systems that impose government interference and diktat as the operating devices.

One of the main tools for this revolution is language. In this way, landlords have become cold-hearted “renoviction” machines, corporations stand accused of earning “excessive net profits” at the expense of hapless families, capital investment in new housing – “financialization” – is to blame for Canada’s housing crisis, the legitimate sale of a building is “elder abuse”, heterodox thinkers are “denialists”, socialism is really capitalism, and so on down the rabbit hole. Words have become weapons aimed at destroying markets and individual freedoms. This must be resisted.

Making lies truthful and murder respectable: George Orwell famously warned of the many linguistic tricks and falsehoods used by propagandists in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. The only defence against this onslaught of confusion, he argued, was a rigorous commitment to truth and clarity in one’s own writing and speech. (Source of right photo: Vic Hinterlang/Shutterstock)

In his famous 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell anticipated many of the linguistic tricks and falsehoods described above. “Political language,” he wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits.” The truth starts one word at a time.

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

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C2C Journal

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

Published on November 16, 2024

By

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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