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They Would Call Me a “Denier” – Let Me Explain what I Believe about Residential Schools in Canada

Published

3 months ago

39 minute read

From The Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Originally posted in the C2C Journal by Rodney A. Clifton

In our largely “post-truth” society, the validity of a given statement is increasingly assessed based on who is making it. There are even those who believe that only some should be allowed to say certain things – while others should be scorned or even imprisoned for uttering the same words. This increasingly describes the discursive landscape concerning Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and whether Indigenous children disappeared from and/or were murdered there. Drawing on his lived experience as a onetime residential school employee, on his long academic record and, not least, on his personal courage in the face of those who wish to criminalize “denialism”, Rodney Clifton presents a humbly argued plea for Canadians to judge their country’s residential school record according to the truth – the actual, factual truth.

Over the last several years a new subspecies of Canadian has been named by some of our elites. They are called “deniers” and are said to be escalating a hateful, racially-motivated campaign to attack and denigrate Indigenous Canadians. The accusations have been numerous. One important recent example comes from Stephanie Scott, Executive Director for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, who wrote, “Sadly…we see increased ugliness from those who deny our truths, experiences and oral histories as reality. Deniers will write their fringe blogs and substacks and leave their foul comments on social media challenging the documented experiences of Indigenous People, particularly residential school Survivors…They will say: ‘It didn’t happen,’ ‘It wasn’t that bad,’ ‘Some good came out of residential schools,’ or the most repugnant, ‘Children never died in those institutions.’”

Kimberly Murray (top), Canada’s Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites, deems Indian Residential School (IRS) “denialism” to be “violence” and “hate”, while Indigenous lawyer Eleanore Sunchild (bottom) calls for its criminalization in Canadian law. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Justin Tang; (bottom) Jason Warick/CBC)

The deniers are apparently so dangerous that mere vitriol, insult, accusation and denunciation such as Scott’s won’t be enough to contain them. They must be driven from the public square and silenced; if need be, they must be imprisoned. Last summer, prominent Indigenous lawyer Eleanore Sunchild suggested that “denialism” should be added to Canada’s Criminal Code, so that there are “consequences for people who are promoting hatred”. Not long thereafter Kimberly Murray, currently the federal government’s “Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools”, echoed that proposal. “Denialism is violence,” Murray intoned in one news conference. “Denial is hate.” The then-federal Minister of Justice, David Lametti, said he would explore the matter of criminalization, as has his successor, Arif Virani.

The anti-“denialist” campaign now appears self-sustaining. Barely a week ago as I was writing this essay, the federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh in a speech to Indigenous leaders accused a federal Conservative Party candidate, Aaron Gunn, of being a “residential school denier”. Also in the past week, the National Post’s Chris Selley reported that the RCMP now consider writing articles critical of the dominant residential schools’ narrative to be a potential threat to national security.

It is likely that Scott, Sunchild, Murray, Singh and perhaps our national police force would think that I too am a “denier”. By their standards, I suppose I am. But before you dismiss me as uninformed – or worse – let me explain what I actually believe. I am one of a number of informed Canadians who question some – but not all – of the claims about what happened to Indigenous children in Indian Residential Schools (IRS). If you must label us, call us “questioning critics”.

Were Children Missing and Murdered?

Questioning critics examine the claim that thousands of Indigenous children who lived in residential schools and hostels are missing and that this is because many if not most of them were murdered by their caregivers. These institutions were funded by the federal government from 1883 to 1996 and the majority were managed by five Christian churches: Roman Catholic (62 schools and hostels), Anglican (35), United Church (19), Mennonite (3) and Baptist (1); the 23 others were managed by federal, provincial and territorial governments (source of these figures is pp. 33-35 of this book).

The majority of Canada’s IRS were run by Christian churches; the claim that many children who attended the IRS went missing or were murdered has brought disgrace to the churches, which have not defended themselves against such accusations. Shown, (top) boys at play outside Fort Providence Mission Indian Residential School, N.W.T.; (bottom) children and nuns in front of the IRS in Maliotenam, Québec, circa 1950. (Sources of photo: (top) Library Archives, licensed under CC BY 2.0; (bottom) Library Archives, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The claim that thousands of schoolchildren were murdered or otherwise went missing is therefore a direct attack on the churches. But these churches, surprisingly, have not defended themselves and their thousands of former employees. Instead, they have either tried to hide from view or have fallen over themselves with repeated apologies, confessions and gestures of contrition. The Catholic Church’s “Sacred Covenant” with the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation (legally, the Kamloops Indian Band), described in this C2C article, is one such recent event.

Even so, the accusations against the IRS are difficult to believe for at least four reasons.

First, the federal Department of Indian Affairs (its exact name has varied over the decades) paid a per capita grant to the school administrators to care for the children and, as part of its oversight, the government required quarterly reports from school administrators showing the number of days each child had been at the school during the quarter. School inspectors regularly visited the schools to ensure that the students were being cared for and were attending. Even if Canadians today can’t believe that these officials cared about Indigenous children, the federal government wasn’t going to pay for students who didn’t exist or had disappeared. Yet we cannot find any documents indicating that any children were missing during the IRS system’s 113-year history.

Questioning critics wonder why the extremely serious accusation of missing and murdered children – including some reportedly buried in schoolyards – was not included in the enormous, seven-volume report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, published in 2015.

Second, many responsible people, Indigenous as well as non-Indigenous, regularly visited the residential schools: chiefs, band councillors, parents, church officials and bureaucrats, along with dentists, medical doctors, nurses and optometrists. If students were going missing, surely someone among these many people would have discussed it with colleagues, raised the alarm among parents, notified the media or reported it to the proper authorities. Yet we cannot find any reports about missing children from any of these people.

Third, many of the residential school employees were themselves Indigenous, and their own children as well as the children of relatives and friends lived in the schools. Is it reasonable to assume that these employees would watch (or hear about) children being mistreated, or worse, murdered, and not report the malfeasance to Indian agents, chiefs, band councillors or the RCMP? Again, we can find no documents of any such thing happening.

Right under everyone’s noses? Children at the IRS were regularly observed by Indigenous and non-Indigenous visitors including bureaucrats, doctors, nurses, parents and chiefs; the author finds it very difficult to believe that children would go missing unnoticed or unreported. At right, a schoolchild and his grandmother at the St. Barnabas Indian Residential School mission hospital, Sarcee Reserve, Alberta. (Sources of photos: (left) The Canadian Press/Library and Archive Canada/Handout, retrieved from Global News; (right) Anglican General Synod Archives in Toronto)

Finally, questioning critics wonder why the extremely serious accusation of missing and murdered children – including some reportedly buried in schoolyards – was not included in the enormous, seven-volume report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), published in 2015. It seems strange that among the report’s 94 Calls to Action (i.e., recommendations or demands), there isn’t one demanding a search for children who were claimed to be missing, murdered or buried in schoolyards. (Volume 6 has six calls, numbers 71-76, to search for unmarked graves in mission cemeteries lying close to residential schools, but any child who had been buried in a formal ceremony was obviously not missing or murdered.) Questioning critics also wonder why the mainstream media didn’t report on this obvious anomaly.

This whole issue seems to have sprung up recently and for still-unknown reasons. It seems reasonable to propose that if children were murdered in residential schools, that information would have been reported long before May 27, 2021, when Kamloops Chief Rosanne Casimir announced that a recent investigation had provided “confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.”  The federal government sent almost $8 million to the band to investigate this claim but, so far, no excavations have even been initiated, let alone have any human  remains been exhumed.

Of course, informed Canadians know that bad, abusive and unacceptable things took place in residential schools. Neither I nor any other questioning critic whom I know denies this or tries to suppress it. No one, in fact, denies that some Indigenous children died while registered in some schools. Nor do I have any reason to doubt the statement by former Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Phil Fontaine that he had suffered sexual abuse while attending an IRS, something that, undoubtedly, shocked the nation when he first said it in a TV interview in 1990.

Why now? The author finds it puzzling that the issue of missing or murdered children, such as the “confirmation of the remains of 215 children” erroneously claimed by Kamloops Chief Rosanne Casimir (top) in May 2021, did not arise years earlier, nor was mentioned at all in the seven-volume report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) published in 2015. (Sources of photos: (top) BC Gov Photos, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; (bottom) megan.mason, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Volume 4 of the TRC Report states that a total of 3,201 IRS students died (see pp. 33-35 of the linked document), mostly in the early years and mostly from infectious diseases like influenza and tuberculosis. Unfortunately, the Commission did not provide comparison data on the number of Indigenous children who died but were not in IRS, or the number of non-Indigenous children who died of the same diseases during the same period. Thus, the TRC Report leaves readers with the impression that residential school students died at much higher rates than children who did not attend residential schools. To verify this claim, more detailed analyses are needed.

My Experience with Indian Residential Schools

Questioning critics also suggest that some good things happened, at least in some schools. This would be one point of “agreement” with Scott, who as I explained above accuses “deniers” of (falsely, in her mind) asserting that some good came out of residential schools. I have had direct experiences that speak to this point.

I lived in an Anglican Church-run residential school, Old Sun (which like about 40 percent of the IRS bore an Indigenous name, in this case that of a famous Chief), on the Siksika First Nation (Blackfoot Reserve) in southern Alberta during the spring and summer of 1966. I was a university student intern working for the Band, and I had a room in the teachers’ wing at Old Sun. I saw what staff and students were doing and I heard the languages they were speaking. In fact, the Indigenous employees in the school and the Band Office were eager to teach me Siksika.

After the summer internship I got a job in the far north for the 1966-1967 school year, working as the Senior Boys’ Supervisor in Stringer Hall, the Anglican hostel in Inuvik, NWT. In that position, I managed the daily activities of 85 mostly Indigenous boys in three dorms, being on duty for 22 hours a day, six days a week. I kept notes about what I saw and what the children said and did.

As a living witness to life at two residential schools in the 1960s, the author recalls his overwhelmingly positive experiences at Old Sun Indian Residential School, Blackfoot Reserve, Alberta (top) and at Stringer Hall, Inuvik, N.W.T. (middle and bottom), of which he kept detailed records.

During my time at Old Sun, I met a young Siksika woman, Elaine Ayoungman. We fell in love and were married in 1968, and we’re still married today, 56 years later. Elaine attended Old Sun for 10 years. Her parents and most of her nine siblings also attended the same school, and over the years I heard many accounts of their experiences.

As a researcher, I have published several articles on the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. My first article on the integration of Dene, Inuit, Metis and non-Indigenous children in Stringer Hall was published in 1972, long before the current controversy about missing residential schoolchildren was in the news. Still, even with my experience and knowledge, and following a nearly 50-year-long academic and public policy research career, I am now to be considered a “denier”.

David Simailak spoke of his experience at residential school in Churchill, Manitoba, which ‘gave him…new opportunities.’ In the TRC report, he fondly remembers excelling in math and spelling competitions and travelling to Montreal for Expo ’67.

The TRC Report itself includes evidence of the positive experiences of some students, though no one would label Commissioners Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson or Wilton Littlechild “deniers”. On page 140 of Volume 1, Part 2, the Commissioners wrote: “It is important to recognize that many students, both in memoirs and in statements to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, have spoken positively about the impact that specific teachers had on their lives.”
Eddie Dillon, for example, was a student in Stringer Hall, Inuvik, when I was the Senior Boys’ Supervisor, and he told the TRC that he was thankful for the education he received in Sir Alexander Mackenzie School. He specifically thanked his parents and the “government of Canada” for giving him valuable opportunities that enriched his life. Similarly, David Simailak spoke of his experience at residential school in Churchill, Manitoba, which “gave him…new opportunities.” On pp 98-99 of Volume 2, he fondly remembers excelling in math and spelling competitions and travelling to Montreal for Expo ’67.

“Many students…have spoken positively about the impact that specific teachers had on their lives,” admitted the TRC Report, which also contains happy reminiscences and quotations from former IRS students; anyone making similar statements today is quickly denounced as a “denier” – and some even want them criminally charged and imprisoned.

These are just two of the positive, even heartwarming statements recounted in the TRC Report. It is sad that more Canadians have not read these stories; I hope some of you do so while you still can. Scott, Sunchild, Murray and others not only want me prevented from writing and speaking on this subject, some of them would want me sent to prison – merely for repeating what I personally witnessed, physically experienced, noted in writing at the time, and which, in a number of instances, closely corresponds to what was formally recorded in the TRC Report.

What is it We Are Really Questioning?

Among the strangest aspects of the campaign to prevent questioning of the official IRS narrative is the recurring claim that critics “deny residential schools”, as if some people are pretending the IRS system never even existed. For example, in Murray’s call for “denialism” to be made a crime, she stated that one of the sanctioned offences would be “denying that residential [schools] happened.” Another instance came during the recent eruption in Quesnel, B.C. over the local mayor’s wife’s decision to share a controversial book with a few friends. One media account claimed the book in question, the best-selling Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth about Residential Schools), “questions the existence of residential schools.”

This is utterly bizarre. Possibly it reflects seriously slipshod thinking and writing; perhaps it’s an attempt to make the critics appear plain crazy. But I know of no-one who denies that residential schools existed and operated for over a century. As for me, remember that I lived and worked in two of them and I married a woman who attended one for 10 years at a time when fewer than 30 per cent of Indigenous children were enrolled in residential schools and the average time they spent was less than five years (see pp 29-33 of this book).

I do, accordingly, question that 150,000 Indigenous children were torn from the arms of their crying mothers and forced to go to school against their parents’ wishes, as the current narrative constantly claims. Even in the early days, most parents signed admission forms to enroll their children in school. When I worked at Siksika First Nation, I travelled around the reserve registering children for school, and I cannot remember any parent who was reluctant to complete the registration forms or any child who did not look forward to going to school.

The author’s personal experiences call into question the widespread belief that Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families to attend residential school; on the contrary, it was common for parents to sign a school enrollment form. Shown at left, The Scream, by Kent Monkman, 2017; at right, the application by Susan Drever for admission of her daughter Neta Drever to the Birtle Indian Residential School.

When I asked my mother-in-law, Nora, what she learned in Old Sun, she replied, “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?” She meant that she was speaking English, which she learned from her residential schoolteachers. Nora also implied that, thanks to learning English, she was able to communicate with other Indigenous people who did not speak Siksika, her mother tongue.

Of course, my mother-in-law thought that going to school and learning to speak, read and write in English was an advantage. But I would not call her or my wife “deniers”. All members of the Ayoungman family spoke Siksika fluently and took part in many cultural activities. Their time in residential school did not wipe out or even weaken their Indigenous culture or identity – but it did prepare them to deal with and navigate in modern-day Canada. (There is a fuller account of my time working at residential schools in this C2C article.)

The above exchange occurred as we were driving back to Winnipeg from the 1993 National Native Convocation in which the Anglican Archbishop and Primate, Michael Peers, apologized to Indigenous people, many of whom had attended the 35 schools and hostels managed by the Anglican church. There were frank and open discussions during the conference, but no one suggested that hundreds, let alone thousands, of children were missing and probably buried in residential schoolyards.

In August 1993, Anglican Archbishop and Primate Michael Peers delivered an apology to the National Native Convocation; while the three-day discussion included many testimonies of former IRS students, none mentioned missing or murdered children. (Source of photo: The Anglican Church of Canada)

As well, informed Canadians and the questioning critics know that in southern Canada, many residential school students went home on weekends and during school holidays. If children were abused by other children or by residential school employees, some of them surely would have told their parents, who would have reported the abuse to Indian agents, chiefs or members of the band councils. But we have found no reports from these people.

Although the next thing will surprise and perhaps even shock readers who have only been exposed to the official narrative about residential schools, I swear this to be the truth: almost all the stories I heard about residential schools and hostels were about positive and humorous things that happened. These included the sports days, Halloween and Christmas parties, the tricks the children played on their supervisors (myself included), or the fact that the schoolkids tried to teach staff like me their native language.

My example illustrates that at least in some schools, the administrators supported the children under their care and held their staff to account. The TRC Report does not, unfortunately, tell us how many school administrators and supervisors acted honourably towards the children.

I did, however, hear from my parents-in-law about one case of abuse. Their oldest daughter, Rosella, who was about 9 or 10 at the time, had been forced by her residential supervisor to eat her breakfast cereal after she had thrown-up in the bowl. Rosella told her father, Arthur, about this incident when she was home for the weekend. When the family returned to Old Sun for Sunday church service, her father and grandfather, Anthony, met with the Anglican priest/principal, who listened to their complaint. Within a few days, the supervisor was fired.

Obviously, this quick action did not happen in all cases. And again: neither I nor any of the other questioning critics with whom I’m familiar denies that serious abuses occurred in residential schools, that these abuses were wrong, and that the abusers should have been more effectively investigated and punished. Nevertheless, my example illustrates that at least in some schools, the administrators supported the children under their care and held their staff to account. The TRC Report does not, unfortunately, tell us how many school administrators and supervisors acted honourably towards the children. Instead, it leaves the impression that all residential school employees, both non-Indigenous and Indigenous, treated the children as if they were sub-human (see Volume 5, pp 139-140).

The author’s personal recollections about residential schools are largely positive and many are light-hearted or even humorous. Shown at top left, Christmas presentation at Portage la Prairie Residential School, Manitoba, 1950s; at bottom left, Portage Residential School hockey champion team, Manitoba, 1964. (Sources of photos: (top left) UCCA, 1986.158P/59; (bottom left) UCCA, 1986.158P/62; both retrieved from The Children Remembered; (right) Library Archives, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

For all these reasons, I am skeptical of some – but not all – of the things being claimed about the church-run Indian Residential Schools. Increasingly, I’m hearing that other Canadians are skeptical too.

What Needs to be Done?

The questioning critics strongly believe that something needs to be done because this issue is festering and polarizing Canadian society, not only between the purveyors of the official narrative and ourselves (those they call “deniers”), but also between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians more broadly and, as I have heard, even within some Indigenous communities. A detailed poll of over 3,000 people by the Angus Reid Group late last year revealed deep (though uneven) divisions among Canadians on core elements of this issue. For example, while 19 percent think the “legacy of colonialism” is “a huge problem”, 17 percent think it is “not at all” a problem. While 55 percent believe Indigenous people do have and should have a special status, 45 percent think they should be treated like other Canadians. While 49 percent think the situation of Indigenous people as a whole has improved in the past 10-15 years, 38 percent think it has worsened. While 19 percent think Indigenous children were “purposely killed” at residential schools, 39 percent think any deaths were due to “neglect”, and 13 percent think they were due to “uncontrollable factors”. And on it goes. This stand-off is not serving Indigenous people, nor is it helpful in reaching an honourable and fair reconciliation.

Open wounds: Recent polling by the Angus Reid Institute revealed that Canadians are profoundly divided on issues related to the IRS’ legacy; the author believes that such division is not conducive to an honourable reconciliation. (Source of charts: Angus Reid Institute)

Let’s pretend for a moment that the Justin Trudeau government had actually made “denialism” a crime and consider the implications of enforcing it. Had that law been in place in 2021, it would become a crime to quote or reprint certain portions of the TRC Report. Technically, some of the statements by the commissioners themselves would be criminal. Then, as soon as Chief Casimir made her announcement referring to “confirmed” “remains” of “children”, it would have become a crime to (correctly) suggest that the ground-penetrating radar survey had merely shown subsurface “anomalies” that could just be disturbances from old excavations.

Let’s also say that a few reckless deniers said so anyway and were packed off to prison. What would happen when, three years later, Casimir suddenly started talking – as she has done – about “anomalies” while quietly dropping the other claims? Would she then join the other deniers in prison for “denying” the “facts” of the “mass graves”? Of course she would be spared. But what would happen to the imprisoned deniers? Now that the formerly criminal word “anomalies” suddenly reflected the official narrative, would they be quietly released in the middle of the night? And if they were, would they then get to sue the federal government for their mistreatment, and each collect a few million dollars in out-of-court settlements for the harassment and false imprisonment they endured?

Thousands of Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, worked in residential schools. For their sake, for the sake of the churches who managed most of the schools, for the sake of Indigenous people and, indeed, for all Canadians, it is time to conduct a proper investigation of the claim that children were murdered in residential schools.

This seemingly fanciful scenario-spinning reflects the absurdity of criminalizing residential school “denialism”. Because really, there is no such thing; all we have are differences of opinion over the meaning of the available evidence and disputes concerning the body of facts at hand. Thankfully, there is a way out of this seemingly intractable impasse. We need to get at the truth in a way that will satisfy everyone. As the TRC commissioners themselves said, reconciliation depends on uncovering the truth.

First, the federal government should appoint a blue-ribbon RCMP task force to investigate the accusations that children are missing and possibly murdered at residential schools. The task force must have the expertise, resources and legal authority, backed by the necessary political will, to conduct a thorough investigation to its conclusion. Unfortunately, Indigenous organizations have so far resisted such a thorough criminal investigation – like the abortive criminal probe launched soon after the Kamloops allegations, which was suspended within days. But it needs to be done.

Second, if this task force finds evidence of malfeasance, a forensic investigation should be conducted in the schoolyards where people think residential schoolchildren were buried. (It’s important to be aware that to date, the only human remains found have been in neglected cemeteries, not any of missing children in schoolyards or the basements of churches.) It is worth mentioning again that the investigation must be conducted by competent independent professionals and not by either the churches or the Indigenous bands.

Third, if this investigation finds evidence that children were murdered, the school employees who are still living, both non-Indigenous and Indigenous, should be questioned and if there is evidence that they were involved in abusing or murdering children, they should be criminally charged and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Also, the names of deceased employees who abused or murdered children should be published.

Finally, a report of the investigation should be tabled in Parliament and distributed to Canadians, just as the TRC Report was distributed.

Thousands of Canadians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, worked in residential schools. For their sake, for the sake of the churches who managed most of the schools, for the sake of Indigenous people and, indeed, for all Canadians, it is time to conduct a proper investigation, including forensic analyses, of the claim that children were murdered in residential schools. This is the only way to address the accusation that some Canadians are “denialists” and to ease the polarization of Canadian society on this very important human and public policy issue.

Rodney A. Clifton is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. His most recent book, with Mark DeWolf, is From Truth Comes Reconciliation: An Assessment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report (Sutherland House Press, 2024).
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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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