Blog

First published at True North on January 16, 2021.

A new not-for-profit group seeks to challenge the activist-driven push going on at some university campuses and at other organizations to divest from the Canadian energy sector.

The upstart InvestNow was launched in December by former Toronto Stock Exchange market intelligence head Gina Pappano, with a mandate to combat energy sector divestment and promote investment in it.

In an interview on The Andrew Lawton Show, Pappano said her organization hopes to raise awareness on why the activists seeking to keep capital away from the energy sector are off-base both economically and environmentally.

“We decided to launch InvestNow to challenge the divestment narrative – to say that divestment is wrong,” Pappano said. “It doesn’t achieve what it’s purported to achieve, which is it doesn’t reduce emissions, and Canada has some of the best energy companies in the world. It doesn’t reduce demand, so the supply will come from elsewhere.”

Pappano pointed to efforts by the US-based 350.org to lobby boards of governors of Canadian universities, urging them to divest their endowments from Canada’s energy sectors for ideological, not financial, reasons.

Last year, the University of Guelph announced that it would pull tens of millions of dollars in investments from the fossil fuel sector after extensive lobbying from activists.

“Last year, they voted for divestment and only three people voted against it on the board of governors. So we’re realizing that the other side is not being told,” said Pappano. 

“We’re trying to write our own letters to the boards of governors and university presidents to say, ‘Consider this, especially for Canada.’ We don’t think people realize how important the Canadian energy sector is to the economy, to running universities, to running everything in our cities, and we want to get that message out there.”

According to Pappano, the groups pushing the divestment narrative are “very well funded,” whereas the pro-energy sector side of the debate has a lot of catching up to do.

The Ontario Teachers Pension Plan has been the recent target by environmental activists to divest from Canadian fossil fuels. 

A coalition of groups, including Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health, Fridays for Future Toronto and a number of current and former Ontario teachers have so far led the charge. 

First published at True North on January 11, 2021.

Ontario premier Doug Ford’s office is not answering questions about how it acquired cellphone data about the movement patterns of people under quarantine.

“Through cell service we can see people are not quarantining, all of them,” Ford said in his Dec. 21 press conference. “At least about 25%, roughly. I don’t care if it’s 10%. These folks are roaming the streets and we’re letting it happen.”

Ford was using the numbers to justify calling on the federal government to put stronger border protections in for incoming travellers.

When asked to elaborate on the statistic, Ford spokesperson Ivana Yelich said the data specifically pertain to Ontarians who’ve traveled to the United States and returned.

“Anonymized cellular data that our researchers looked at shows that non-essential travellers arriving in Ontario from the U.S. only spend 77% of their time at home during the 2-week recommended quarantine period,” Yelich said.

Several further emails about the source of the data went unanswered.

Ford refused to rule out using cellphone data in the province’s effort to curb COVID-19 last March, but the province has not confirmed since then whether it has adopted such a tactic.

It is not clear whether these specific data came from a sampling of voluntary participants or are part of a broader surveillance effort.

An Environics study conducted over Christmas using cellphone data found that 70% of people sampled were “out and about.” Environics similarly says the data were anonymized.

It is possible that the numbers Ford cited were the product of a similar study, though the fact that the government claims to know the people tracked were non-essential travellers to the United States suggests personalized knowledge was required.

If the tracking was done involuntarily, and without a law permitting it, it would be illegal, one civil liberties lawyer says.

“As far as I am aware, there is nothing which gives authorization to surveil cell phones, so it must be coming from a health order if it’s happening,” said Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms litigation manager Jay Cameron. “Unless there’s something hidden in health orders allowing for it, the default position of the law is that privacy rights require a warrant for that kind of surveillance.”

First published at True North on January 4, 2021.

Canada’s most outspoken pot activist is running for office.

Marc Emery, whose crusade for legalized cannabis has put him behind bars more than three dozen times, will be seeking the People’s Party of Canada nomination in the Ontario riding of London––Fanshawe, True North has learned.

Emery has a long history of candidacies at the federal, provincial and municipal levels, but hasn’t been on a ballot since his 2008 run for mayor of Vancouver. In the coming weeks, he’ll be moving to his hometown of London, Ont, where he intends to vie for the PPC nomination while working in his brother’s soon-to-be-opened Emery Brothers cannabis store.

Though he’s known for his marijuana advocacy, Emery says he’s not a political one-trick pony.

“I’ve never just cared about cannabis,” he said on The Andrew Lawton Show. “I mean, I read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in October 1979 – I think Oct. 17 I started it, and that’s a red letter day in my life because it changed everything. Really, what I’m concerned about is what I call the COVID dictatorship we’re under at all levels of government, where there’s no opposition – except for wonderful Randy Hillier – but essentially no opposition to the complete state control of our entire way of life.”

Business shutdowns and other infringements of liberty over the past year have helped drive Emery back into politics.

“We’ve lost every constitutional guarantee in the last year of assembly, of speech. Censorship is rampant. We can’t go visit family. We can’t even breathe legally, really, without wearing a mask,” Emery told Lawton.

Emery, a self-professed libertarian, endorsed Maxime Bernier’s run for the leadership of the Conservatives in 2017, then backed the Bernier-led People’s party in the 2019 federal election.

Despite the PPC not winning any seats in 2019, Emery said the party stands out in the current political climate, which he thinks voters will appreciate.

“The bottom line is, I think the People’s party will become much more popular because they’re a clear alternative to the Conservatives, Liberals, Greens, NDP,” Emery said. “Those four parties…have endorsed the same totalitarian authoritarian measures. They’ve all been part of the dictatorship.”

PPC spokesperson Martin Masse said Emery is a welcome addition to the field, but will have to vie for the nomination like any other prospective candidate.

“Marc has been a long-time supporter of Maxime from the time he ran for the CPC leadership. He supports our policies. He is welcome in the race,” Masse told True North. “This being said, the candidate selection process has not begun yet. We don’t know if last year’s candidate, Bela Kosoian, will decide to run again, or if there will be other people who will want to run in this riding. Like all other candidates, Marc will have to go through the vetting and nomination process.”

Emery concedes his criminal record won’t go unnoticed.

“I’ve got 40 appearances in prisons and jails,” he said. “I’ve been jailed for cannabis in every province. I did time in six states in the United States…I was arrested in the Yukon but that was dropped, so I can’t say I’ve been put in jail overnight there, but certainly every other province and multiple times in some.”

London––Fanshawe is currently held by NDP member of parliament Lindsay Mathyssen.

First published at True North on January 2, 2021.

After a New Year video posted by Ontario MPP Gurratan Singh and his brother, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, received criticism online for potentially violating COVID-19 restrictions, an NDP spokesperson said the two brothers and their families, in fact, live in the same household.

With several politicians across the country apologizing for traveling abroad or getting together in violation of lockdown rules and public health guidance, the lighthearted video tweeted by Gurratan Singh raised some eyebrows.

As of Boxing Day, the Ontario government has barred families living in different households from gathering. The NDP says that rule does not apply here, however.

“Jagmeet and Gurratan do live in the same household,” NDP spokesperson Melanie Richer told True North.

“Early on in the pandemic, Jagmeet and his wife made the choice to include his brother, sister-in-law and parents in their bubble. During the pandemic, they’ve been living together in the same home. This allows Jagmeet (to) drive to Ottawa and avoid unnecessary public travel, and helps him better support his aging parents during the crisis.”

Both of the Singh brothers are married, and Gurratan has a newborn daughter as well.

Richer added that Jagmeet spent “several weeks” in his British Columbia riding of Burnaby South in the summer and fall, but “hasn’t been back since the start of the second wave.”

Ontario MPP Rod Phillips resigned as finance minister Dec. 31 after media learned he had been on the tony Caribbean island of St. Barths since Dec. 13, despite his government’s repeated recommendation for Ontarians to stay and home and avoid any non-essential travel.

Other travelling politicians included Alberta minister Tracy Allard, who left Canada for Hawaii earlier in December, Quebec Liberal MNA Pierre Arcand, who cut short a trip to Barbados, and Saskatchewan cabinet minister Joe Hargrave, who took what he deemed an “essential” trip to his home in California. All have apologized and returned to Canada.

First published at True North on December 22, 2020.

A southern Ontario health unit intended to use its powers to shut down a handful of churches, including one with no evidence of COVID-19 transmission, documents show.

Emails obtained from Southwestern Public Health through a freedom of information request show health unit officials planned to close four churches, three of which were tied to a Norwich, Ont. Christian school that had a COVID-19 outbreak. The fourth was Aylmer, Ont.’s Church of God, whose pastor, Henry Hildebrandt, has become a vocal opponent of lockdown orders, and whose drive-in services pushed the province to ease its initial restrictions on places of worship.

All four churches received a letter from Southwestern Public Health in November requesting they close for 28 days on a “voluntary” basis to reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Internal emails reveal the health unit’s plan was actually to shut them down involuntarily if they didn’t comply.

Section 22 of Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act gives medical officers of health broad power to “require a person to take or to refrain from taking any action” when “a communicable disease exists or may exist or that there is an immediate risk of an outbreak of a communicable disease” in the officer’s jurisdiction.

The letters to the Norwich-area churches were dated Nov. 13, while the letter to Hildebrandt was dated Nov. 17. All were signed by the region’s medical officer of health, Dr. Joyce Lock.

An earlier draft of the letter to churches said “if you do not close within one week of receipt of this letter, we will apply an Order under the Health Protection and Promotion Act which will legally require you to close so the community can be protected.”

A health unit program director removed this paragraph, noting in a Nov. 12 email that officials would not be revealing the shutdown plan to churches.

“We were not going to share the ramifications at this time,” Susan MacIsaac wrote, indicating the health unit was “planning to take a softer approach. Meaning recommending a closure and than (sic) if they don’t take our advice in a week, applying the order.”

“We wanted to give them an opportunity to close under a recommendation but I have been told by (Southwestern Public Health CEO Cynthia St. John) if they don’t close in a week we would apply the section 22,” MacIsaac wrote in another email.

The proposed shutdown is referred to more as a possibility than a certainty in later emails.

“We are having (public health inspectors) follow-up on this in case there is need to enforce down the road,” health unit program manager Amy Pavletic wrote on Nov. 18, one day after the letter to the Church of God was sent. “We are hoping they will heed this recommendation and if not, there may be a need for section 22 however we are not telling them at this point.”

In a briefing note sent to several colleagues, Pavletic again emphasized that churches were not to be told the health unit would shut down those who didn’t close voluntarily.

“Although we are not telling them this, we may follow-up with a section 22 charge if they decide not to follow this recommendation,” she wrote.

Until receiving a request for comment from True North, Church of God Pastor Henry Hildebrandt was unaware a shutdown was being considered.

“This is a total surprise,” he said. 

“We would see it as a total failure on their part to recognize what holds the social fabric of our society together. Pastors are frontline workers. I pray with the sick, counsel the depressed, encourage relationships to be stronger, and comfort the grieving, among many other things. Church is not a building, it’s a living, thriving community of faithful people, dedicated to making this world a better place in God’s name. How can you shut that down, especially when there is no evidence of harm?”

Nowhere in the documents is there a rationale given for why the Church of God was targeted, despite not being linked to an outbreak. A spokesperson for Southwestern Public Health said the health unit conducted a “risk assessment,” which considered “our area’s local epidemiology (e.g., incidence rate, positivity rate, and reproduction rate).”

In the health unit emails, someone references a household connected to the church testing positive for COVID-19, but says there is “no evidence of transmission.” Hildebrandt maintains the church has had no COVID-19 cases.

Whether a genuine public health risk exists is important in determining whether a section 22 shutdown order would be lawful, Canadian Constitution Foundation litigation director Christine Van Geyn told True North.

“If a business, church, (or) school is complying with public health orders, there isn’t the evidence of an outbreak, I would say there’s a lack of evidence for issuing an order,” she said. “And the order, if it closes that church, is a fundamental violation of one of our oldest and most important rights, which is free exercise of religion. You can’t go around targeting a specific institution on the basis of its political views.”

“Church of God is the organization that has been behind the freedom rallies,” one staffer said in a Nov. 18 chat log. “I’ve also been hearing from my operators that members of the church have been very confrontational with their staff about masking exemptions and threats to sue their businesses if they ask what reason they are exempt from masking requirements.”

Ultimately, no section 22 orders pertaining to these churches were issued. The Southwestern Public Health spokesperson said the health unit instead “decided that education and awareness were an appropriate first step in mitigating risk transmission to members of the congregation and the community.”

A follow-up email from Pavletic dated Nov. 20 says that one of the four churches, the Netherland Reformed Church, agreed to close for two weeks, one was unreachable, and two, including the Church of God, refused to close.

“For churches who have informed us they will not close, this information has been provided to Operations and they have brought forward to (medical officer of health) Dr. Lock,” she wrote. “Dr. Lock will be making the decision on what the next steps will be. I.e. moving forward with charges.”