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

Published

4 weeks ago

33 minute read

From the C2C Journal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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