Zionist influence is a threat to the appearance of fairness in Canada’s judicial system. A judge with many ties to Israel recently found an Afghan immigrant guilty of threatening synagogues in a questionable case tied to the self-declared Jewish state.
This Tuesday, Global News reported that Ontario Court of Justice judge Edward Prutschi found Waisuddin Akbari guilty of threatening to bomb synagogues in Toronto. The owner of a shawarma shop, Akbari denied the claim both in court and to Global, calling judge Prutschi “racist”.
In his ruling, Prutschi found Akbari guilty of two criminal offences for purportedly telling a BMW salesman he planned to blow up synagogues. There’s no audio of the conversation between Akbari and a sales agent at a dealership where he stopped for an oil change. There’s only video of the two individuals having a conversation at the dealership. The judge admits his ruling was based almost entirely on giving greater credibility to the witness over Akbari.
Why would someone planning to blow up synagogues tell a car salesman he didn’t know about his plans? Conversely, why would the car salesman lie? Now, Akbari faces up to seven years in jail.
Irrespective of what transpired at the BMW dealership, the perception of judicial bias is stunning. The judge’s ruling mentions “Israel” or “Israeli” 32 times, noting that “he expressed a belief that Israel was not a real country” and “the Israeli state and the Jewish people should also be subjected to a genocide in retaliation.”
Prutschi is a staunch Zionist who, Jewish Toronto reports, “serves his community through his involvement on numerous boards and committees including senior volunteer service for Hillel Ontario, CIJA (the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs) and UJA (United Jewish Appeal) Federation of Greater Toronto.” One of his last posts on X is a photo of an event Prutschi attended in which his daughter was photographed with fanatically anti-Palestinian Islamophobe Michael Rapporteur. On his former law firm’s site, Prutschi is pictured with Alan Dershowitz at a talk sponsored by the firm.
The judge’s daughter went to live in Israel in August 2023 immediately after graduating from TanenbaumCHAT, which sent students to barbecue for soldiers on an Israeli military base last year. Prutschi also graduated from TanenbaumCHAT, which has long held “IDF days” where students fundraise for projects assisting the Israeli military.
In 2015, Prutschi made an Israel Bonds appeal at a synagogue in which he called on congregants to “secure your bond with the world’s most morally upstanding army”. The then lawyer also called on attendees to help finance the Israeli government to mark “our Covenant with the State of Israel”.
Prutschi shouldn’t be adjudicating anything to do with Israel (or antisemitism). It’s outrageous that he didn’t recuse himself. According to the Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, “Recusal is typically called for when a judge has interests, beliefs, or opinions about the case at hand that could interfere with their ability to make an unbiased ruling.”.” Prutschi should be investigated by the Judicial Council [AJ1] for not recusing himself.
The judge’s failure to recuse himself portends badly for the objectivity of the judiciary. The fact Prutschi felt comfortable ruling on this matter speaks volumes on Zionist power in Ontario’s legal system. How many other stridently Zionist judges have ruled on Israel-related cases?
It’s unclear but many prominent legal figures across Canada promote what the World Court [AJ2] suggests is genocide in Gaza. Toronto employment lawyer Howard Levitt and Montreal lawyer, turned Conservative party candidate, Neil Oberman are maybe the most aggressive/high profile lawyers enabling genocide. A recent Canadian Jewish News story was headlined “This pro bono legal team has helped over 550 Canadian victims of antisemitism since Oct. 7”. The article explains that “CIJA’s new legal task force is suing the federal government, universities and school boards to ‘make people behave’.”
A former Deputy Attorney General of Ontario, Mark Freiman, and former federal crown prosecutor, Nanette Rosen are co-chairs of CIJA’s Legal Task Force. On Tuesday, CIJA announced a partnership with the Canadian Jewish Law Association and Alliance of Canadians Combatting Antisemitism to establish the Canadian Criminal Law Working Group. Former senior crown attorney Rochelle Direnfeld will chair a group that will combat the “rise in antisemitic incidents”.
In 2020, Tax Court of Canada judge David Spiro, chair of United Jewish Appeal Toronto’s Public Affairs Committee and former co-chair of CIJA Toronto, interceded after a University of Toronto law school hiring committee selected Valentina Azarova to direct its International Human Rights Program. After an outcry over academic freedom the university launched an investigation that was led by former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell. While assessing the case, Cromwell accepted an invitation to be keynote speaker at a CIJA/United Jewish Appeal of Greater Toronto conference.
There’s a need for a concerted response to Zionist influence in the legal world. It’s outrageous that a Jewish supremacist judge is allowed to rule on an Israel-related case.
Yves Engleris the author of 13 books. His latest book, available now, is “Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy”.
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On a clear day overlooking the inner harbour of Prince Rupert, a northwest British Columbia town home to Canada’s third largest port, chances are you’ll see a spurt of water coming from the surface of the ocean.
“I’ve lived here my whole life and every once in a while, you might get a glimpse of a humpback, but there have been so many humpback whales lately in the harbour, I’ve never witnessed that in my life. It’s a sign that our waters are healthy and abundant,” says Arnie Nagy, a member of the Haida Nation.
Traditionally, Nagy is known as Tlaatsgaa Chiin Kiljuu, or Strong Salmon Voice, because of his years fighting to ensure the survival of the fishing industry and wild salmon on B.C.’s North Coast as a member of the United Fishermen and Allied Workers’ Union.
“I’ve lived here my whole life and every once in a while, you might get a glimpse of a humpback, but there have been so many humpback whales lately in the harbour, I’ve never witnessed that in my life. It’s a sign that our waters are healthy and abundant,” says Arnie Nagy, a member of the Haida Nation.
The relationship between Canada and the United States, once a symbol of economic interdependence and diplomatic cooperation, now stands at a crossroads.
The recent imposition of sweeping 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports by U.S. President Donald Trump has ignited a wave of resistance in Canada. But beyond the sharp exchanges of political rhetoric and retaliatory measures, a quieter but resolute movement is emerging — one that is reshaping Canadian consumer behavior, business practices and national identity.
In response, former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swiftly retaliated with tariffs on $20.8 billion worth of American goods, signaling a sharp departure from Canada’s traditionally measured approach to trade disputes.
This federal election is critical for Canada. The world is at a crossroads, and Canadians need to choose which path we are going to walk.
Will Canada elect a government that will turn its back on climate action, reverse course on all the environmental policies that we’ve helped put in place over the past nine years, and gut our scientific institutions, like President Trump has done in the U.S.? Or will we elect to move forward with environmental progress, trust in science, and a national conversation rooted in fact?
This election is about freedom—the freedom for Canada to follow its own course, rather than bend to the will of the leader of the United States.
It’s about freeing ourselves and our nation from the fossil fuel industry that has been misleading Canadians about the climate crisis for decades, and that aims to keep us locked into a dying energy system that is expensive, dangerous, and misguided.
It’s about freedom of information—making sure that Canadians are informed about climate change, biodiversity loss, and other environmental issues, so that we, as a nation, can make informed decisions.
And it’s about safety and security—knowing that we are working towards a future where our children are safe from toxic products, we are fighting the plastic pollution crisis, and we have a strong and secure financial system that is part of the solution to climate change, rather than working against our climate goals.
Canada is far from perfect. Our record as a nation is far from perfect when it comes to climate action and on environmental protection on the whole. But we’re making progress, and we must stay the course and keep moving forward. We need to contribute to the global effort to stave off the worst of the climate crisis, and keep this planet livable for generations to come.
We need to do this work with the rest of the international community, rather than isolate ourselves and become a resource play for the United States.
The future of this country, its role in the world, and the state of our natural environment all depend on how we vote in this election.
Authorized by Environmental Defence Canada, environmentaldefence.ca, 1-877-399-2333
Thank you, Trump, for giving Canadians a passionate cause — our survival as a nation. But how to keep the glue fresh holding a rickety, outsized state together? Islam tells us to thank God for our blessings and work hard to keep on the ‘straight path’. We are now everywhere across Canada and eager to stay that way, faced with fearsome Islamophobia from the bully across the border. We may be the ‘mouse that roared’ but strong faith can work miracles. We are a vital key to survival of 21st century Canada.
Islam: last survivor
Since the rise of modern imperialism in the 16th century, the world has been at war.
Christian European empires at war with the world, i.e., with each other and with the indigenous people of the world. This meant enslaving countries where the other great religions – Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam – predominated. Imperialism undermined Christianity in the European societies, now the ‘collective West’, which are now largely secular, the new gods money and technology, but the fall out from all this was to populate the declining empire centers with their African and Asian victims, eager to find a place at the table. Secularism and a world order stacked in favor of the collective West has meant decadence and declining populations there, at the same time, making room at the table for industrious go-getters from the former colonies.
The infusion of this new blood suddenly puts the great religious on their own path of rivalry for ‘hearts and minds’ in opposition to the secular gods, which failed to provide a healthy moral order. Secularism resulted in ever more destructive world wars, leaving the whole world today on the brink of death not only of humans but of nature, the entire planet. While Christianity claims to have the largest following (after all, it came at gunpoint), Islam remains the main rival, despite the five centuries of war against it, growing faster than any other religion, continuing full-steam-ahead today.
Warfare waged by empire against indigens is by definition asymmetric, big shiny guns vs spears, rocks, or variations on nonviolent resistance, Gandhi’s Satyagraha, inspired by his own resistance to British empire. Buddhism has come to the West as a universal religion, popular among disaffected youth, but neither it nor Hinduism or nature worship have made any real impact on the world order. While Jews do have a major role in all this, it is not Judaism but rather empire at work so we can discount Judaism as a positive force. Christianity (with the exception of Orthodoxy1) has had influence more due to its political economic role as willing handmaiden of empire.
Islam is a different matter. It claims to act as a religion in world affairs. While Christianity claims more followers, they are mostly pacified excolonial subjects, and even they are at odds with the current secularized Christianity promoted by ‘collective West’ missionaries.
50% of Canadian Muslims consider themselves very religious,
77% say Islam impacts their daily life,
60% always eat halal meat, and observe Ramadan strictly,
41% pray at least 5x a day.
Only Islam has both escaped the secular trap which imperialism set to mold subjects to a post-imperial world order ruled by money and technology, and insists on living according to religious intent, with belief central to our lives.
Dandelions
Despite Chinese communism/capitalism’s love affair with Israel (Jews are, after all, masters of moneymaking), ordinary Chinese love the Palestinians, nicknaming them ‘dandelions’ on Tiktok, i.e., disdained but undaunted, flying through the air (as on Oct 7), landing to come alive, beautiful, natural – all miracles of God’s creation. This metaphor works in spades for Muslims today.
Canada has been a testing ground for this, where ‘Mohammetans’ trickled in, starting in the 1880s, as individuals who managed to defy the racist immigration policies intent on expanding the white empire, as if brown, black and Asian weren’t really part of humanity. It is a heartwarming story testifying to human resilience and showing a path out of the dying imperial order.
At the beginning of the imperial era, there were robust communities of Muslims throughout Eurasia, from Spain to China, and Africa, from Egypt to Ghana. Without five centuries of Christian empire and the war against Islam, most of the world would probably be followers of the Prophet Muhammad. Instead, the Muslim world, the entire world, was subjugated to nominally Christian empires, quickly losing faith to money and technology, and we are living out the consequences. While Christianity purports to be egalitarian, free of racism, its sorry imperial past, condoning slavery in the Americas and culminating to massive bloodbaths in the 20th century, is a legacy Islam does not share. On the contrary, millions of Muslims were kidnapped and sent into slavery and Muslims were victims of both Christian/secular bloodbaths.
While Islam is criticized for not promoting unrestricted technology and wealth extraction, that was never an inspiration for the faith. Our brief sojourn on Earth is not about accumulating wealth, but rather to worship, to thank God for the miracle of life, and to use our time to try to improve ourselves, to follow the ‘straight path’ of moral and ethical living. That is what all religions are about, so Christianity’s decline came when it lost that vital thread, leaving the other religious traditions less compromised. Islam is seen as the chief rival, so it has suffered the most. But suffering is at the heart of all religion, and the test of health is to turn suffering into tempering, strengthening resistance to evil. The horrors of the open genocide against Palestinians and the incredible resilience of those suffering is testament to this.
*****
Murray Hogben’s Minarts on the Horizon: Muslim Pioneers in Canada (2022) is a trip through Canadian history and across Canada’s vast lands, collecting at least a hundred stories of plucky Muslims, men and women, who came to make a life here, starting in the 1880s, invariably men who came, found their feet, then brought over a young bride from home, and raised a new generation of Canadian Muslims. But also a few plucky boys or women who did the same. None came with the idea of riches, but rather escaping persecution or wars, looking for a safe place to raise a family and keep the flame of Islam alive. They brought the spark of the ummah and kept it alive, providing enduring warm in a cold and forbidding continent.
Hogben is a convert from Presbyterianism, like most converts having fallen in love with a Muslim. His love, Alia, also a student at Carleton University, was the daughter of the Indian High Commissioner in the 1950s. Although there are no statistics on conversion, few Muslims convert to Christianity, the religion of the oppressor, and really just a less coherent version of Islam. Missionaries soon learned that and left them alone. Again, no statistics, but my sense (and personal experience) is that it is easier to convert from Protestantism to Islam, both because of the lack of religious imagery and the simplicity in both. At the same time, Protestants proved to be the most hostile to Islam, with countless anecdotes in Hogben’s history of Catholics being generous, often at life-threatening moments or where no space was available to worship, providing that space. We see how Protestantism collapsed quickly in the 20th century while Catholicism still thrives, so its hostility is understandable.
The first Muslims officially registered in Canada were James and Agnes Love of Upper Canada (Ontario) in 1851, ethnic Scots, and another family by 1871, the Simons from the US, east Europeans from Ottoman lands. Most of our first Muslims were Syrian Lebanese (Lebanon being part of Syria in Ottoman days) and Albanians, escaping the beleaguered Ottoman army, constantly threatened by Europe. They were disparaged as ‘Turks’ though anti-Turk was more like it. They are ‘white’, so more able to slip past immigration officials. Asians (targeting especially Chinese and Japanese) were kept out with a $200 landing fee from 1908 on. Interestingly, they did not think to hide their faith, calling themselves Mohametans, as was the nickname given to Muslims then. Often the hopeful immigrant depended on a nice official to get through, some turned back at the dock in Europe for ‘bad eyesight’ or illiteracy.
The early immigrants, like the large influx of Jews at the turn of the century, mostly had to peddle goods by foot to farmers, buying from Jewish wholesalers, often forced to sleep in the snow, sometimes disappearing, either murdered by hostile farmers or frozen/ starved to death. If they survived, they strived to open an ironmongers (hardware store) or haberdashery. Or became candymakers. There are no stories of rags-to-riches millionaires in Hogsen’s history, but many stories of successful entrepreneurs, teachers, bureaucrats, using their modest wealth to fund mosques, to help fellow Muslims immigrate or through crises, building the community, the ummah, examples of nurturing the faith, providing the material conditions for worship and following the ‘straight path’. At the same time, being good citizens and neighbors, welcoming interfaith dialogue, promoting Islam as a healthy way of living.
As the ethnic variety of Muslims increased, Albanians and Syrians were soon living and worshipping with Asian and African immigrants. The US has a very different history, where millions of Muslim Africans were enslaved and forced to convert to Christianity, only later rediscovering Islam in the civil rights movement post-WWII. Canada prides itself now in welcoming exslaves in the 19th century, though the Christian society was just as racist, and the new arrivals mostly fared badly and returned to the US after the civil war.
Immigration only changed after WWII, initially in 1947 when refugees from Europe came in large numbers as part of a new world order, a United Nations, promising an end to colonialsim and a new ethic rejecting racism. A Bosnian caught in Italy, not wanting to join the Yugoslav army, managed to get to Ottawa as part of the post-WWII invitation for farmers. In 1961, racial restrictions were abolished for immigrants, giving preference to education and work experience. Numbers increased from 5,800 in 1961 to 33,430 in 1971 – 6x, to 100,000 in 1981 – 3x, then doubling each decade to 2011, with over 1,000,000. Today’s 1,775,715 is 5% of the population, 5x more than Jews. When I go to Friday prayers at University of Toronto’s Koffler2 Multifaith Center, I never cease to marvel at the variety of faces in the crowded prayer hall (there are 4 services), and the fact that 400-500 Muslims are praying collectively on a university of 100,000 students — the only ones! ‘Why else are we here except to worship God and strive to follow the straight path?’ I ask myself.
British Columbia
Hogsen interviewed the Fijian president of the BCMA, Muntaz Ali. Yes, indentured Indians came to Fiji as reliable sugar cane workers, and – why not? – moved on to Canada, Ali in 1964. The most infamous attempt to immigrate via Vancouver was the refusal to allow the ship Komagata Maru, carrying 376 prospective Punjabi immigrants (mostly Sikhs but some Muslims), to land in Vancouver in 1914. It was not till 1983 that enough Muslims arrived to build the first mosque in BC, founded by Ali and immigrants from South Africa and Egypt.
Alberta
Edmonton boasts the first Canadian mosque, Al Rashid Mosque built in 1938. Peddlers could become store owners in remote fur-trading posts. One of Canada’s great women pioneers was Lebanese Hilwie Hamdon, who came to Canada in 1923 at the age of 16 to marry Ali Hamdon (41) who had established himself in Fort Chipewyan. Ali felt at home with the natives, learning Cree. Eventually they moved to Edmonton and with 22 others, built their mosque. Edmonton grew, attracting many more Muslims to Canada’s only mosque. The mosque was threatened, but Hilwie organized, fundraised, lobbied, and got the city to help move it to the Fort Edmonton Heritage Park, a 1967 Centennial project. All this paid off, producing Canada’s first Muslim (Ismaili) mayor Naheed Nenshi in 2010. Another remarkable Edmontonian who helped save the Al Rashid Mosque was Lila Fahlman (nee Ganem father Lebanese, mother Welsh), who gained her doctorate in educational psychology, and founded the World Council of Muslim Women Foundation, travelling to China to meet Muslim women in 1998.
Over and over, I read how cultured Muslim immigrants were, even if illiterate when they arrived. Education is at the heart of Islam, the command being to understand and praise God and nature, to move along the straight path, ever closer to God. The quarrels within the community attest to the diversity of traditions, yet never spilling over into violence. The original immigrants were more tolerant of differences, embracing Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, even Ahmadiyya. As the communities grew, different mosques could cater to different traditions, but the core beliefs, Ramadan, prayers, knit the fabric together. Intolerance came more from outside pressure, especially Saudi Wahhabism, and the overzealous Tabhlighi Jamaat from Pakistan, Bangladesh and southeast Asia, but Hogsen shows how the more liberal, tolerant strain endures in each community, less concerned about headscarves and dress, more about the actual beliefs.
Most immigrants ended up with small stores, barber shops, service stations, not factory workers in mass production, which is alien to Muslim traditions. Their children went/go on to be doctors, lawyers, office workers, scientists, teachers, real estate agents. The few wealthy individuals Hogsen interviewed were proud of using their wealth to help the community. No billionaire Kofflers. The unity of the ummah is not through wealth but through worship. The apartness of Muslims is solely due to refusal to make alcohol central to communication, and the rejection of mass entertainment, which is often morally compromised and eats up precious time from the more important focus on spirituality. Politically, Muslims are conservative but as anti-imperialists, anti-racists, anti-usury, concerned with social justice they often align with the NDP.
Saskatchewan
There really is a ‘little mosque on the prairies’, thanks to Muslims in Swift Current, who started a weekend Islamic school in the United Church, where the community also held Friday and Eid prayers. The minister even offered to cover the pictures of Jesus and Mary. Mohammad Afsar, from Pakistan, was moved to tears and told him the use of the facility would be enough. In 1983 they bought an unused church as the Islamic Centre of Swift, Masjid Al-Khair.
Manitoba
Ernest Abas, Lebanese, recalled that his parents married and then failed to get passage on the Titanic in 1912. he grew up on their farmstead. His parents were illiterate but taught the children their prayers and stories from the Quran. Trinidadian student Khaleel Baksh arrived in Winnipeg in 1962 and became a founder of the first mosque in 1976. As with many small communities, Muslims used friendly churches for worship, and often held their pray meetings on Sunday if necessary (not Saturday). Another common thread was/is to appeal to rich Saudi Arabia, Ghaddafi’s Libya, Zulfikar Bhutto’s Pakistan for funding.
Ontario
Ontario has the most Muslims, 7% of Ontarians, followed by 5% of Quebeckers and 5% of Albertans. Along with Syrians, early immigrants to Ontario were Albanian, though no mosque was established in Toronto till 1961. London became the hub for Muslims and is now the second largest population, with a mosque in a large brick house in 1957, since replaced by the 1964 mosque. Muslims from Toronto and Windsor would come for marriages and to settle, with Detroit providing the imam. There was a constant move back and forth to the US. Like Edmonton, the creation of the mosque was key to attract more Muslims.
Hamilton started late, with the first Pakistani student at McMaster University in 1966. Like many of the new wave of immigrants, Mohammad Afsar had lived through and survived the tragedy of the partition of India, and was an engineer. This new cohort of Muslims transformed the community, with the smarts and drive to build mosques and interact with the non-Muslim community. A small house served as the mosque in 1969 and a real mosque built in the 1970s. Summer camps and schools began to spring up, important as secular education continued to eat away at moral values.
Kingston, Windsor also developed communities, starting with a few immigrants post-WWII and growing into a mosque by the 1970s.
Toronto has the lion’s share of Muslims. 10% of Toronto’s population and 31 mosques. The first mosque was established by Albanians in a storefront in the west end in 1960 and a Presbyterian church built in 1930 was purchased in 1961 on Boustead Ave. Hogsen explains how conflicts with later immigrants often soured older mosque members. The Albanians eventually left this group and founded another mosque for themselves. The new Muslim Students Association (MSA) became a North American organization in various cities and looked to Saudi financing of mosques, which put a Wahhabi slant to worship and greater restrictions on male/ female etiquette, though never enough to prevent a modus vivendi as the ummah expanded over time.
There were Syrians in Ottawa by the beginning of the 20th century, and Pakistanis arrived starting in the late 1950s. A Pakistani Ottawan engineer managed to convincing visiting Zulfikhar Bhutto to promise him $100,000 for a mosque and he came through, the mosque opening in 1972. As is the case everywhere, a mosque becomes a lighting rod and like Toronto, 10% of Ottawans are Muslim, many Somali refugees from the 1980s.
Quebec
The preference for French immigrants to Quebec brought a continuous wave of immigrants from former French colonies Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire and others, giving Quebec a uniquely colorful community. Like Toronto the first mosque came after WWII, in 1958. There are more than 90 now in Montreal alone (vs 11 synagogues). McGill’s Institute of Islamic Studies was founded in 1952, the first in Canada. Marriages were only in registered churches till Lesage’s ‘quiet revolution’, and Bill 194 in 1965 gave the Islamic Centre of Quebec civil status and the authority to conduct marriages. Similar conflicts with the new, more orthodox immigrants, the MSA and the Tablighi Jamaat caused new groups to build their own mosques, as elsewhere. There was resistance to allowing a Muslim cemetery in Montreal though it was resolved. This same resistance in Quebec City was what precipitated the worst religious mass murder in Canada in 2017, when a white extremist shot 7 Muslims at the mosque there. London Ontario also suffered this tragedy when 4 Muslims were shot in 2021.
Nova Scotia
The first Muslims were Syrian, with a Muslim cemetery founded in Truro in 1944. A Muslim organization was founded in 1966 composed of 6 doctors. A mosque was built in Dartmouth in 1971 which expanded into the Maritime Muslim Academy in 1998, with a school, their first imam Jamal Badawi, a professor at St Mary’s University. Just as few immigrants remain in the Maritimes, so Muslims came and went, mostly to London. A mosque was built in Truro and a Catholic church was refashioned as a mosque in Trenton.
There are Muslims in every province and territory. There was great excitement in 2019 when a mosque, the Yukon Muslim Society, was opened in Whitehorse, in addition to the Inuvik Masjid (Midnight Sun Mosque) and Yellowknife Shia mosque.
The organizing efforts to create a real ummah in Canada really started in the 1930s and picked up steam in the 1960s with a national organization Council of Muslim Communities of Canada, now the National Council Canadian Muslims, which is a strong lobby fighting Islamophobia in national security agencies, the CRA, policing, and education. NCCM also advocates on Canadian foreign policy related to Palestine, Afghanistan, the treatment of Uyghurs in China and the treatment of Muslims and other minorities in India. It is the only voice against Quebec’s persecution of headscarves, and sued PM Stephen Harper for calling it terrorist, forcing him to apologize. This capable advocacy in the face of continued bigotry gives Islam a presence that other religions lack. Muslims here and everywhere are the backbone of the struggle against Israel’s genocidal persecution of Palestinians.
Pakistanis outnumber other Muslim immigrants (13%), with Iranians, Moroccans, Algerians, Bangladeshi, Syrians, Afghanis and Lebanese all in 3-5% range. When and how they arrived follows the vagaries of the past two centuries of upheaval, making each Muslim’s lineage a fascinating tale. I always enjoy hearing these stories, stories of unity in diversity, unique to Islam. There are Canadian Muslims from many other nations, now, more and more Africans. I’ve met Chinese Muslims, even a Boer South African, blond and blue-eyed who ‘saw the light’ and brought along his parents into the faith too. Islam is the most universal of the great religions, cutting through race and class more than any other, and the most welcoming to converts. To be able to tell Archangel Gabriel on Judgment Day that you brought someone to the faith is a hefty weight on the scale of your good actions.
New weapons
The century of groundwork laid by our hardy forefathers/mothers spawned a remarkable educational network for the 21st century. Reviving the Islamic Spirit is a yearly conference in Toronto over the Christmas break since 2001, bringing our star thinker-activists from around the world (e.g.,Tariq Ramadan, Imran Khan, Attallah Shabazz, eldest daughter of Malcolm X) and sympathetic others (e.g., Robert Risk, Eric Margolis, Karen Armstrong, even Prime Minister Trudeau). In 1997, the Muslim Association of Canada (MAC) was registered as a faith-based charity, focusing on education, community service, and volunteer engagement, with centers and schools in Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto (seven schools) and Montreal. In 2024, they opened the Canadian Islamic College in Mississauga providing an accredited Honors Bachelor of Arts. MAC also hosts yearly conferences, supplementing RIS with a more hands-on activist program.
Canada escaped the scourge of slavery, which killed millions of African Muslims to feed the greed of industrial capitalism, but American Muslims were a lifeline to the fledging Muslim movement here. Detroit, Michigan and Toledo, Ohio were important oases for Canadian Muslims in need of an imam or as waystations for future Canadian Muslims. Now, we look to many brilliant American scholars and activists who come to RIS and MAC conferences. Canadian Islamic College is modeled on Hamza Yusuf’s Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California.
Islam plays the same ‘unity in diversity’ role in the US. We take inspiration from the fact that half of US blacks have converted to Islam. From being lowly slaves to being heralds of the New World Order, not of secular globalism, but of a globalism grounded in faith, bringing all peoples of the world together in defense of peace and love of nature.
Of course, Zionist spoilers do their best to blacken these efforts, accusing us and our conferences of links with ‘terrorists’ (i.e., supporting resistance movements such as Hamas), although organizers are careful not to give the real terrorists (Israel-lovers) any rope. Islamophobia is always there, as it has been for 1400 years, in overdrive since the rise of imperialism. But history is on our side, as the other religions fail to keep the faith against secular capitalism. As any civilization declines, it is vicious in its death throes. Islam’s enduring flame is still strong in the face of genocide and the destruction of God’s creation. Our daily prayers from Canada blend with millions of others around the world 24-7, all of us facing Mecca, our focus, to beam the message up to God that not all humans are frivolous and disdainful of His majesty.
Failed gods
I came to Islam late, after a lifetime under the spell of Marx. Interestingly, Marx, for long nicknamed ‘the Moor’, started to admire Islam and the Arab world in his later years, spending his last winter seeking treatment for pleurisy in Algiers. Of course, he studied local conditions, observing the common ownership among the Arabs which the French were undoing. Colons would seize land then sell back to native for a huge profit. Colonists were more inviolable than handsome William I.
Even the poorest Moor surpasses the greatest European comedian in the art of wrapping himself in his hood and showing natural, graceful and dignified attitudes. Their social classes are mixed, some dressed pretentiously, even richly, others in rags and tatters, blouses. Such accidents, good or bad luck, do not distinguish Mohamet’s children, their absolute equality in the social intercourse is not affected; on the contrary only when demoralized, they become aware of it; as to the hatred against Christians and hope of victory over these infidels, their politicians have the same feeling of equality, not of wealth or position but of personality, a guarantee of keeping up the one, of not giving up the latter. They will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement.3
He marveled at the scant presence of the state: in no town elsewhere is there such laisser faire, laisser passer; police reduced to a bare minimum; unparalleled lack of embarrassment in public. For Muslims there no such thing as subordination; they are neither subjects nor citizens. There is no authority, save in politics, something which Europeans have totally failed to understand. This self-governing and ethic of sharing was alien to the capitalism he so despised. Unlike Voltaire, Kant, Hegel, etc, Marx did not welcome the destruction of this precapitalist world, nor did he promote atheism for what he recognized as a truly devout people. Islam, even at its most stagnant, was not the dead Christianity that he lampooned and dismissed in favor of secular revolution.
Marx did not live to see the error of his atheism, how his brilliant, radical critique of the social order would spawn a soulless totalitarianism. When I finally woke up to that, like Marx, I was drawn to Islam and precapitalist social formations for a key to the way forward. I’m pretty sure Marx would look at how Islam has survived the war against it by his hated capitalism, and rout for its ability to self-regulate based on a strong faith, a true brotherhood, not the familial sibling brothers, who you don’t choose, but fellow Muslims, with whom you are glad to share whatever little you have, not to exploit and profit from them.
Islam was founded in the 7th century, when all faiths – Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, nature worship – were alive and meant something, before science became destructive technology and before we were able to turn our greed and envy into weapons that are genocidal not just for us humans, but for Earth itself. Thank God He saw fit to provide the Quran as an antidote to the coming deluge. Noah is hands-down my favorite prophet. My sixth sense for the coming apocalypse, a prophet of nature’s revenge but with an olive branch promising another chance.
1 Christian Orthodoxy is much less guilty of this. Though Russia was indeed imperialist, it did not aim to wipe out the indigenes, and there were no Russian colonies in Africa and Asia, imposing Orthodoxy instead of local religions. Orthodoxy did not participate in the Crusades of the 11-14th centuries. Orthodoxy is closest to the original teachings of Jesus, and Muslim worship is closest to Orthodoxy. It is a kindred spirit to Islam; however, it has not had a worldwide presence like Catholicism or Islam.
2 Jewish billionaire philanthropist founder of Consumers Drug Mart.
3 Marcello Musto, The last years of Karl Marx, 2020.
The Trump administration promises to double down on what it says will be the fiercest deportation program in U.S. history. Judging by history and rhetoric, the administration has no qualms about stripping kids from their parents and spouses from their partners. Many asylum seekers in the U.S., their advocates and liberal mainstream media have mused that some cornered refugees may flee up…
The NDP’s belated call to scrap the F-35 contract is a damning comment on Jagmeet Singh’s leadership. This cautious response to a rapidly shifting political terrain also includes an outrageous sop to the military industrial complex.
On February 25 I asked the NDP leader if he’d reconsider paying tens of billions of dollars to a US arms giant for offensive fighter jets as part of his stated desire to take a hardline in response to Donald Trump’s threats. Singh spent over a minute responding to my question but refused to answer. While seeking to portray himself as the ‘get tough on Trump’ candidate, Singh was unwilling to even say the party could reconsider paying huge sums to Lockheed Martin for 88 F-35s. To make his cautiousness even more absurd, the NDP has effectively opposed the F-35 contract, which is to cost $19 billion upfront and $70 billion over the life cycle.
The answer wasn’t simply off the cuff. I arrived half an hour early and had a conversation with Singh’s assistant in which I told her the two questions I hoped to ask.
Two weeks later I asked Yves Francois Blanchet basically the same question I had asked Singh. Last Tuesday the Bloc Québécois leader said he was open to canceling the F-35 contract in response to Trump’s belligerence. Blanchet expressed concern about a “switch off controlled in the US” for Canada’s expensive fighter jets.
In a sign that the issue was ripe, my Blanchet clip was viewed by over 200,000 times on social media, which is a surprisingly large number for an exchange in French.
To be fair to Singh, days before my question to Blanchet Postmedia reporter David Pugliese published a story discussing the US having an effective “kill switch” over the warplanes. Additionally, Michael Byers published a column in the Globe and Mail detailing some nationalist reasons to oppose the F-35 deal.
Also on Tuesday, thousands began responding to a Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, Just Peace Advocates and World Beyond War email campaign to Mark Carney and the leaders of the other political parties. It called for the F-35 contract to be scrapped and to “Stop Canada’s plan to spend billions on U.S.-made & controlled weapons of war.”
On Thursday former Liberal foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy added his voice to a rapidly growing number of Canadians speaking out on the F-35. That day Portugal also announced it was abandoning a plan to purchase the F-35s. The government cited concerns about US reliability and control over the planes’ logistics and parts.
Amidst the mounting pressure, defence minister Bill Blair told CBC on Friday that Carney asked him to reconsider the F-35 deal. The news made international headlines and has hit Lockheed Martin’s stock.
In effect, Canada’s new investment banker prime minister outflanked the leader of a social democratic party polling under 15%. In a widely circulated YouTube interview Saturday morning Brent Patterson and I discussed the NDP brass’ caution amidst a rapidly changing political terrain.
On Sunday the NDP released a sloppily put together statement (they rewrote the headline after publishing) saying the government should cancel the F-35 deal and its contract for 16 Boeing P-8A Poseidon Multi-Mission Aircraft. It notes “At a time when Donald Trump has threatened not just workers and jobs, but Canada’s very sovereignty, it’s a matter of national security that our defence technology not be controlled by the United States. That’s why we’ll cancel the F-35 contract, and build the fighter jets Canada needs in Canada, using Canadian workers.”
Simultaneously, NDP defence critic Lindsay Mathyssen released a statement on the F-35. It noted, “We cannot allow President Trump to control the production, maintenance, and software of our military equipment. At a time when the United States is not respecting our territorial sovereignty, we cannot risk him being able to control our military equipment … Cancelling these projects would have an immediate impact on President Trump’s economy and send our clearest message yet that Canada will not stand for his disrespect.”
Mathyssen has largely ignored the issue even though 1,400 emailed her in 2022 calling on the party to question the “Liberal’s fighter jet plans” in a statement headlined “NDP must oppose F-35 purchase”. Previous to that the NDP largely ignored the widely mediatized 2021 No New Fighter Jets for Canada statement signed by Neil Young, Stephen Lewis, Teagan and Sarah, David Suzuki and many other notable Canadian and international figures.
While it’s good the NDP has decided to criticize the F-35, their Sunday statement also calls for Canada to spend 2% of GDP on its military by 2032. That would boost outlays on the war machine by some $20 billion per year (with annual rises matching GDP growth).
This is an odious shift in NDP policy. In July Singh repeated to me that the NDP considered NATO’s 2% of GDP target “arbitrary”. Their shift reflects the party’s subservience to an alliance NDP members previously voted to withdraw from as well as to the president seeking to annex Canada.
The NDP statement even responds to the contradiction, noting that “We don’t do this [call to increase military spending] to placate Donald Trump.” But that is precisely who has spurred the renewed push to boost military spending. Trump’s criticism is what led the Liberal leadership candidates to seek to outdo each other in declaring the speed at which they would hit the 2% of GDP target.
While it may be difficult to have principles in electoral politics, the opportunism shaping NDP military policy is beyond embarrassing.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese says radar technology that Canada has agreed to purchase from Australia is “world-leading” and will help forge closer ties between the two countries amid growing trade uncertainty. Canada announced the $6.6 billion partnership with Australia on Wednesday (AEDT time), setting up a program of work to deliver a new early warning…
What’s the easiest way for Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to invade Canada?
Simple: Have voters sit out the upcoming election and let Pierre Poilievre become Prime Minister. If you’re Canadian—especially if you live abroad—now’s the time to get organized. Make sure you and at least five of your family and friends have a plan to vote. Not sure if you’re registered? Check here! Voting from abroad? Double-check your registration and make sure you’ve got everything you need by visiting this link.
In this week’s Gaslit Nation Canada Super Special, we’re joined by the amazing Leigh McGowan from Politics Girl, plus Marcus Kolga, a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and human rights advocate. Marcus is an expert on Russian and Central/Eastern European issues and Kremlin disinformation. He regularly shares his insights in top publications like The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Maclean’s, and The Atlantic Council. Marcus also played a crucial role in the Canadian campaign for the Magnitsky human rights sanctions and has helped drive similar efforts in Estonia, Latvia, Sweden, and Australia. His expertise has taken him to testify before parliaments in the UK, Australia, and Canada, covering everything from Russian disinformation to Interpol reform. Currently, he’s a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad.
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EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:
March 17 4pm ET – Dr. Lisa Corrigan joins our Gaslit Nation Salon to discuss America’s private prison crisis in an age of fascist scapegoating
On 14 March 2025, IDRC announced that it is funding research to uphold fundamental democratic freedoms and address rising threats to peoples’ rights. The CAD4.13 million investment supports six projects across five regions:
Demonstrators in Kampala, Uganda, march in 2018 to draw attention to the murders, kidnappings and, activists claim, a lack of action by the police in response. Frederic Noy/Panos Pictures
The freedom to associate, participate in decision-making and express views is fundamental to democracy. Yet, in many countries around the world, these hard-won political and civil rights are being questioned and eroded through physical attacks, online intimidation, smear campaigns, digital surveillance and the lack of response from authorities when attacks occur. Legal and policy restrictions limit individual rights such as same-sex unions and reproductive health services while, increasingly, obstacles like funding bans and censorship are reducing the ability of people and organizations to contest these measures.
Research is needed to inform the strategies and actions of organizations, groups and movements that advocate for the respect for human rights. Research institutions, networks, and women’s rights and LGBTI+ organizations are leading IDRC-supported research to:
understand what drives the erosion of rights in each context
analyze the strategies used to counter these trends
explore how to strengthen rights defenders, for example through alliance-building and cross-movement solidarity
generate policy recommendations to safeguard rights
Airplanes with standing sections. An extra fee for boarding charged at airport terminals. Even smaller carry-on luggage allowances. These are a few of the features offered by Unfair Canada.
Since December, satirical ads for the fictional airline have popped up on Facebook and Instagram alongside anonymous, first-hand accounts of flight attendants stuck on planes for hours without pay.
The posts are part of the Air Canada flight attendants’ union’s campaign to put a spotlight on the hours of unpaid work expected of flight attendants as their union negotiates a new contract.
New Zealand-based Canadian billionaire James Grenon owes the people of this country an immediate explanation of his intentions regarding media conglomerate NZME. This cannot wait until a shareholders’ meeting at the end of April.
Is his investment in the owner of The New Zealand Herald and NewstalkZB nothing more than a money-making venture to realise the value of its real estate marketing subsidiary? Has he no more interest than putting his share of the proceeds from spinning off OneRoof into a concealed safe in his $15 million Takapuna mansion?
Or does he intent to leverage his 9.6 percent holding and the support of other investors to take over the board (if not the company) in order to dictate the editorial direction of the country’s largest newspaper and its number one commercial radio station?
Grenon has said little beyond the barest of announcements that have been released by the New Zealand Stock Exchange. While he must exercise care to avoid triggering statutory takeover obligations, he cannot simply treat NZME as another of the private equity projects that have made him very wealthy. He is dealing with an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance.
While I do not presume for one moment that he reads this column each week, let me suspend disbelief for a moment and speak directly to him.
Come clean and tell the people of New Zealand what you are doing and, more importantly, why.
Over the past week there has been considerable speculation over the answers to those questions. Much of it has drawn on what little we know of James Grenon. And it is precious little beyond two facts.
Backed right-wing Centrist
The first is that he put money behind the launch of a right-wing New Zealand news aggregation website, The Centrist, although he apparently no longer has a financial interest in it.
The second fact is that he provided financial support for conservative activists taking legal action against New Zealand media.
When I contacted a well-connected friend in Canada to ask about Grenon the response was short: “Never heard of him . . . and there aren’t that many Canadian billionaires.”
In short, the man who potentially may hold sway over the board of one of our biggest media companies has a very low profile indeed. That is a luxury to which he can no longer lay claim.
It may be that his interest is, after all, a financial one based on his undoubted investment skills. He may see a lucrative opportunity in OneRoof. After all, Fairfax’s public listing and subsequent sale of its Australian equivalent, Domain, provided not only a useful cash boost for shareholders but the creation of a stand-alone entity that now has a market cap of about $A2.8 billion.
Perhaps he wants a board cleanout to guarantee a OneRoof float.
If so, say so.
Similar transactions
Although spinning off OneRoof could have dire consequences for the viability of what would be left of NZME, that is a decision no different to similar transactions made by many companies in the financial interests of shareholders.
There is a world of difference, however, between seizing an investment opportunity and seeking to secure influence by dictating the editorial direction of a significant portion of our news media.
If the speculation is correct — and the billionaire is seeking to steer NZME on an editorial course to the right — New Zealand has a problem.
Communications minister Paul Goldsmith gave a lamely neoliberal response reported by Stuff last week: He was “happy to take some advice” on the development, but NZME was a “private company” and ultimately it was up to its shareholders to determine how it operated.
Let me repeat my earlier point: NZME is an entity whose influence and obligations extend far beyond the crude world of finance (and the outworn concept that the market can rule). Its stewardship of the vehicles at the forefront of news dissemination and opinion formation means it must meet higher obligation than what we expect of an ordinary “private company”.
The most fundamental of those obligations is the independence of editorial decision-making and direction.
I became editor of The New Zealand Herald shortly after Wilson & Horton was sold to Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly. On my appointment the then chief executive of O’Reilly’s Independent News & Media, Liam Healy, said the board had only one editorial requirement of me: That I would not advocate the use of violence as a legitimate means to a political end.
Only direction echoed Mandela
Coming from a man who had witnessed the effects of such violence in Northern Ireland, I had no difficulty in acceding to his request. And throughout my entire editorship, the only “request” made of me by O’Reilly himself was that I would support the distribution of generic Aids drugs in Africa. It followed a meeting he had had with Nelson Mandela. I had no other direction from the board.
Yes, I had to bat away requests by management personnel (who should have known better) to “do this” or “not do that” but, without exception, the attempts were commercially driven — they did not want to upset advertisers. There was never a political or ideological motive behind them. Nor were such requests limited to me.
I doubt there is an editor in the country who has not had a manager asking for something to please an advertiser. Disappointment hasn’t deterred their trying.
In this column last week, I wrote of the dangers of a rich owner (in that case Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos) dictating editorial policy. The dangers if James Grenon has similar intentions would be even greater, given NZME’s share of the news market.
The journalists’ union, E tu, has already concluded that the Canadian’s intention is to gain right-wing influence. Its director, Michael Wood, issued a statement in which he said: “The idea that a shadowy cabal, backed by extreme wealth, is planning to take over such an important institution in our democratic fabric should be of concern to all New Zealanders.”
He called on the current NZME board to re-affirm a commitment to editorial independence.
Michael Wood reflects the fears that are rightly held by NZME’s journalists. They, too, will doubtless be looking for assurances of editorial independence.
‘Cast-iron’ guarantees?
Such assurances are vital, but those journalists should look back to some “cast-iron” guarantees given by other rich new owners if they are to avoid history repeating itself.
I investigated such guarantees in a book I wrote titled Trust Ownership and the Future of News: Media Moguls and White Knights. In it I noted that 20 years before Rupert Murdoch purchased The Times of London, there was a warning that the newspaper’s editor “far from having his independence guaranteed, is on paper entirely in the hands of the Chief Proprietors who are specifically empowered by the Articles of Association to control editorial policy”, although there was provision for a “committee of notables” to veto the transfer of shares into undesirable hands.
To satisfy the British government, Murdoch gave guarantees of editorial independence and a “court of appeal” role for independent directors. Neither proved worth the paper they were written on.
In contrast, the constitution of the company that owns The Economist does not permit any individual or organisation to gain a majority shareholding. The editor exercises independent editorial control and is appointed by trustees, who are independent of commercial, political and proprietorial influences.
There are no such protections in the constitution, board charter, or code of conduct and ethics governing NZME. And it is doubtful that any cast-iron guarantees could be inserted in advance of the company’s annual general meeting.
If James Grenon does, in fact, have designs on the editorial direction of NZME, it is difficult to see how he might be prevented from achieving his aim.
Statutory guarantees would be unprecedented and, in any case, sit well outside the mindset of a coalition government that has shown no inclination to intervene in a deteriorating media market. Nonetheless, Minister Goldsmith would be well advised to address the issue with a good deal more urgency.
He might, at the very least, press the Canadian billionaire on his intentions.
And if the coalition thinks a swing to the right in our news media would be no bad thing, it should be very careful what it wishes for.
If the Canadian’s intentions are as Michael Wood suspects, perhaps the only hope will lie with those shareholders who see that it will be in their own financial interests to ensure that, in aggregate, NZME’s news assets continue to steer a (relatively) middle course. For proof, they need look only at the declining subscriber base of The Washington Post.
Postscipt On Wednesday, The New Zealand Herald stated James Grenon had provided further detail, of his intentions. It is clear that he does, in fact, intend to play a role in the editorial side of NZME.
Just how hands-on he would be remains to be seen. However, he told the Herald that, if successful in making it on to the NZME board, he expected an editorial board would be established “with representation from both sides of the spectrum”.
On the surface that looks reassuring but editorial boards elsewhere have also been used to serve the ends of a proprietor while giving the appearance of independence.
And just what role would an editorial board play? Would it determine the editorial direction that an editor would have to slavishly follow? Or would it be a shield protecting the editor’s independence?
Only time will tell.
Devil in the detail Media Insider columnist Shayne Currie, writing in the Weekend Herald, stated that “the Herald’s dominance has come through once again in quarterly Nielsen readership results . . . ” That is perfectly true: The newspaper’s average issue readership is more than four times that of its closest competitor.
What the Insider did not say was that the Herald’s readership had declined by 32,000 over the past year — from 531,000 to 499,000 — and by 14,000 since the last quarterly survey.
The Waikato Times, The Post and the Otago Daily Times were relatively stable while The Press was down 11,000 year-on-year but only 1000 since the last survey.
In the weekend market, the Sunday Star Times was down 1000 readers year-on-year to stand at 180,000 and up slightly on the last survey. The Herald on Sunday was down 6000 year-on-year to sit at 302,000.
There was a little good news in the weekly magazine market. The New Zealand Listener has gained 5000 readers year-on-year and now has a readership of 207,000. In the monthly market, Mindfood increased its readership by 15,000 over the same period and now sits at 222,000.
The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly continues to dominate the women’s magazine market. It was slightly up on the last survey but well down year-on-year, dropping from 458,000 to 408,000. Woman’s Day had an even greater annual decline, falling from 380,000 to 317,000.
Dr Gavin Ellis holds a PhD in political studies. He is a media consultant and researcher. A former editor-in-chief of The New Zealand Herald, he has a background in journalism and communications — covering both editorial and management roles — that spans more than half a century. This article was published first on his Knightly Views website on 11 March 2025 and is republished with permission.
The New York Times yesterday (11 March 2025) headlined: “Trump Intensifies Statehood Threats in Attack on Canada.” What particularly stood out was the sub headline: “The U.S. president on Tuesday reiterated his claims on Canada’s territory as he increased tariffs, threatening to bring the country’s economy to its knees.”
How are Canadians supposed to feel about being threatened? How are Canadians to feel about the indignity of being brought economically to their knees? It calls to mind the invocation of Mexican revolutionary Emilio Zapatista who stated: “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!”
The article opens:
The fresh attacks President Donald Trump aimed at Canada on Tuesday extended beyond imposing more tariffs on America’s neighbor and NATO ally, and laid out in the clearest terms yet his vision for annexing Canada and making it part of the United States.
Trump is a selfish, narcissistic, vain person (e.g., here and here), and that plays well to a certain audience. It is obvious from his pandering to the public, his name calling of others (e.g., referring to Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau as a governor of the 51st state), his preening with bold sharpie-signed documents held up for cameras, his declarations affecting others without first speaking to the others.
It is about Trump’s vision for Canada. It’s an all stick and no carrot approach. That is what annexation is: “possession taken of a piece of land or a country, usually by force or without permission: The country’s annexation of its neighbor caused an outcry.”
Past and present Canadian governments (and the Canadians who elect so-called representatives to the parliament) are responsible for Canada’s exports being so reliant on the US market rather than diversifying its trade into other world markets.
It doesn’t have to stay that way. In fact, it is a rude wake-up call that Canada must not rely on the US to be a faithful and steadfast partner. Canada’s dignity and sovereignty1 demand a change in the status quo.
Unlike China, Canada is unprepared for round two of a Trump administration.
The US economy is forecast by many commentators to be heading for a recession, something that Trump does not deny. China, on the other hand, has set its 2025 GDP growth target at around 5%. It seems futile to tie one’s ship-of-state to another sinking ship.
Canada says it will fight fire with fire, that it will reciprocate the US tariffs. This is a lose-lose proposition. Canada needs to get off its knees and seek a win-win, respectful relationship — something that China always promotes. No need to completely disengage with the US, but apply to BRICS and the BRI and develop relations with the Global South. Pursue a path that is best for Canadians.
1 Canada’s dignity and sovereignty will always be morally challenged given that it exists on the dispossession of its Indigenous peoples — a lamentable criminality that Canada shares with the US.
An extreme Jewish supremacist activist convinced the police to arrest me for criticizing her racist posts. She’s likely acting as a front for a vast Zionist ‘lawfare’ initiative hostile to embarrassing Canadian leaders.
Over the past 16 months I’ve annoyed many among the Jewish Zionist establishment. My writing, social media commentary and reporting on protests have circulated widely. But it’s a particular type of social media journalism/activism that’s had the widest impact.
Around two million watched an interview I did with the mayor of the Montreal suburb Hampstead, Jeremy Levi, in which he said he was okay with Israel killing 100,000 Palestinian children because “good needs to prevail over evil”. As with some of the other interventions, my post was reported on by the Montreal Gazette and international media such as RT and Middle Eastern Monitor. Many also watched my exposing Anthony Housefather, Mitch Garber and Heather Reisman as genocidal Jewish supremacists. Over 10 million watched a video I did mocking a McGill rally promoting genocide.
At the end of April, I questioned lawyer Neil ‘cancel man’ Oberman who has instigated over a dozen injunctions or legal threats against opponents of genocide, including the Palestine encampment at McGill university. (Oberman’s ‘lawfare’ is part of a vast legal effort in service of genocide detailed recently in a Canadian Jewish News article explaining that “CIJA’s new legal task force is suing the federal government, universities and school boards to ‘make people behave’.”) Subsequently, Oberman yelled at me in court. At that point I was on ‘ban who I can’ Oberman’s radar and he assisted extremist Zionist influencer Dahlia Kurtz.
In early July Kurtz, a woman happy to play Jewish victim, retweeted a message I posted a week earlier in a threatening manner, suggesting some police or legal campaign was planned. She wrote Hello, @EnglerYves. I’m advising you in this one message only that you are harassing me. You’re threatening and you’re making me afraid for my safety. You must stop this harassment — and communication with me. Stop now.” (I responded, “I’m advising you in this one message to stop promoting Israel’s holocaust in Gaza. Stop now.”)
While she accused me of “harassment” for responding to her racist and violent messages on X, Kurtz didn’t block me as others say she’s done to them. I’ve never met, messaged or threatened Kurtz and don’t even follow her on X.
In the summer the police investigated Kurtz’s claims against me. After deciding there wasn’t sufficient evidence to press charges they closed the file. But, when Oberman sent a legal letter on Kurtz’s behalf in mid-December the file was reopened (I assume Oberman assisted Kurtz from the get-go).
Kurtz’s allegations against me have broad personal and political implications. Finding me guilty of harassment for simply responding to her racist, violence promoting, messages would set a negative precedent. Snarky, biting, political statements in response to genocidal supremacism is a low bar for harassment. It would grant some legal legitimization to Zionist tears/victimhood or what a recent meme labeled the “Am Yisrael Cry” phenomenon.
At a personal political level if I “harassed” Kurtz then the legal system might also find I’ve “harassed” a slew of other (mostly non-Jewish) political figures with my journalism/activism/commentary. I’ve attended or interrupted a dozen press conferences with Steven Guilbeault. I live in the environment minister’s riding and have bumped into him on the street and at the Biblioteque Nationale. If I’ve “harassed” Kurtz then I’ve definitely “harassed” Guilbeault.
The situation is similar for Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante who also happens to swim at the community centre near my home. Ditto for foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who’ve I’ve challenged many times in person and on X. Housefather also has a far greater claim against me than Kurtz since I’ve challenged him on numerous occasions and responded with the same type of hard hitting, snarky, commentary to his (albeit less directly) racist and violence promoting posts.
Levy, Garber, Melissa Lantsman, B’nai Brith, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and many other pro genocide accounts have blocked me on X. I haven’t created any ghost account to continue responding to their genocidal Jewish supremacism. I do everything in my name and am proud of my commentary, writing and activism. Similarly, when I attend press conferences to question politicians, I employ my own name.
Challenging a political system promoting war, inequality and climate breakdown is the least we can do. Canadian support for Israel’s genocide has exposed the rot of Canadian foreign policy.
Now that I’ve had some time to reflect on my arrest, incarceration, experience with the legal system, and outpouring of support, another lesson has been learned. Every time Zionists employ police-state methods to shut down criticism of Israel more people understand what Palestinians face daily.
Chinese Canadians have been put through the ringer by Canada’s government and their collaborators in the community. Now, Chinese Canadians will form a national organization to oppose McCarthyism and defend their democratic rights.
The organization which will be spearheaded by a Canadian Senator, Yuen Pau Woo, who was accused of “acting as a spokesperson for China rather than for Canada”, by a Canada-based NED-funded Uygur separatist organization in 2021, for daring to oppose a Uygur ‘genocide’ declaration motion in Canada’s Senate.
‘Resist Chinese Exclusion’
Mr. Woo, Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project (URAP)’s sworn enemy, declared his intention in a February 2, 2025, speech:
“We must resist this emerging form of Chinese exclusion. To champion our rights and freedoms, I intend to establish an organization—tentatively called Rights and Freedoms of Chinese Canadians—because this is not a battle I can fight alone. My final appeal to all Chinese Canadians is this: we must not allow prejudice or ideology to dictate who qualifies as a “good” Chinese Canadian. … We must unite rather than allow divisions to weaken our collective strength.”
In an interview with The Canada Files, long-time Chinese Canadian organizer and author, William Dere, said the Montréal collective of Chinese Canadians he is a part of, will fully participate in and help this proposed national organization against McCarthyism get organized among various Chinese communities across Canada. The vision? To protect the democratic rights of Chinese Canadians, protect community organizations and fight back against Canadian state McCarthyism.
William Dere’s parents worked in Montreal. CLICK HERE to read the family’s remarkable story.
Dere said “The Chinese Canadian community… needs the support of Canadian society”. He says given rampant anti-China attitudes in the nation, this will be a challenging fight, but one activists are prepared to take on. Dere is appreciative that at least one political party, the Green Party of Québec, has opposed McCarthyism against the Chinese Canadian community.
Rise of anti-Asian racism
Chinese Canadians would not consider forming such a national organization without reason. That reason has been McCarthyism, slowly rising since 2010, when ex-CSIS Director Richard Fadden baselessly claimed there were Chinese Canadian politicians under the influence of a ‘foreign government’ (Fadden later admitted regretting the claims). Confucius Institutes were then systematically targeted from 2013 onwards.
Meanwhile, anti-Asian racism had begun to increase in Canada ever since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. As noted by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, between 2020 to 2021, “hate incidents reported by South Asian and Southeast Asian people increased by 318 per cent and 121 per cent respectively. The McCarthyism bubbled to the surface in 2022 and 2023, under the justification of supposed Chinese interference in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 elections.
The bluntest example: the trials and tribulations of Chinese Family Services of Greater Montreal (CFSGM) and the Sino-Quebec Centre (CSQRS), both based out of Canada’s Québec province, baselessly accused of being police centers for the Chinese government. In desperation, “board directors used their own assets as collateral to secure an extended loan” to save the CFSGM’s building, after provincial Québec funding was cut. Dere and Wawa Li, in The Canada Files, noted that “the organizations filed a lawsuit against the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]—a suit that remains unanswered.”
President of the Board of Chinese Family Services of Greater Montreal, Carole Cheung, was quoted in a report in The Canada Files saying:
“It is deeply regrettable that the actions of the RCMP have caused nearly two years of suffering for our community through the loss of essential services. We no longer have French classes in Chinatown or Brossard; our support for vulnerable seniors and women experiencing intimate partner violence has been diminished; our intake services for new immigrants have been curtailed; and we have lost vital assistance in employment research. We have cooperated with the RCMP investigation from the beginning, and we urge them to allocate the necessary resources to complete the investigation as soon as possible and to stop the bleeding of social services for our community.”
Remarkable irony
And with remarkable irony, meetings to help organize Chinese Canadian opposition – spearheaded by CFSGM and the Canadian Race Relations Foundation – to McCarthyism, are occurring in the very Chinese Family Services building which the community nearly lost to the Canadian state’s ongoing McCarthyite campaign.
Despite collaborators, such as URAP, Canada-Tibet Committee and other assorted anti-communists getting assistance from either the Canadian or US government, Dere says these groups are ‘elitist’ and lack on the ground support in the Chinese Canadian community.
Dere and activists who’ll be involved in the upcoming national Chinese Canadian organization hope to see a return to a time when “Canada and China had mutually beneficial relations”, “very beneficial” trade and exchanges on both the cultural and economic fronts. Will such a day come? This author certainly hopes so.
Aidan Jonah is the Editor-in-Chief of The Canada Files, a socialist, anti-imperialist news outlet founded in 2019. Jonah wrote a report for the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council, held in September 2021.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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As Donald Trump seeks to cripple Canada economically to pursue annexation, the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) is assisting the US bid to stoke war with China. With far-right Trump supporters calling for the US to invade, Canada continues to assist US belligerence in Asia.
Last month, HMCS Ottawa transited through the Taiwan Strait with a US warship. It was the first non-US warship to make the provocative move in 2025. A Chinese Navy commander claimed Canada’s actions “deliberately disturbed the situation and undermined the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait.”
It’s the sixth time an RCN vessel has transited through the waterway since Canada released its Indo Pacific Strategy in November 2022. The Indo Pacific Strategy calls on Canada to augment the regular number of warships in east Asia from one to three vessels.
A few days before traversing the Taiwan Strait HMCS Ottawa participated in a joint exercise with US and Filipino ships in the Philippines Exclusive Economic Zone. They said it “underscores our shared commitments to upholding the right to freedom of navigation…as well as respect for maritime rights under international law as reflected in the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).”
A month ago, the Associated Press reported that Ottawa and Manila are in the final stages of negotiating a defence pact to boost joint military exercises. Canada’s ambassador in the Philippines David Hartman said the agreement “will enable us to have even more substantive participation in joint and multilateral training exercises and operations with the Philippines and allies here in the region.”
Hartman didn’t hide that China is the target. He declared, “we have been vocal in confronting the provocative and unlawful actions of the People’s Republic of China in the South China Sea and the West Philippine Sea. We will continue to do so.”
Ottawa has been assisting Washington’s push to turn the Philippines into a bulwark against China. Since Bongbong Marcos came to power two years ago, the US has established four new bases there and promoted Filipino territorial claims opposed by China and other states. (When US troops invaded the Philippines in 1898 CIBC acted as a main bank for the US occupation administration. Other Canadian corporations such as Sun Life and ScotiaBank also followed US forces into this quasi colony.)
At the start of last year, Canada signed a memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation with the Philippines. In June HMCS Montreal participated in Canada’s first ever naval patrol with a Filipino vessel in the South China Sea. Two months later, the frigate visited Philippines and then participated in a US-Australia-Philippines operation in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.
A year ago, Ottawa offered Philippines satellite technology to track fishing boats even when they shutter their location transmitting devices. “Canada’s Dark Vessel Detection tech helps Philippines manage territorial dispute with China,” explained a June Globe and Mail headline.
To those who look at the world through Washington’s eyes China is a threat all over. Over the past two months both the Liberal and Conservative parties have released Arctic strategies that suggests China is a threat. But China is 1,500 kilometres away from the Arctic and doesn’t dispute any Canadian claim there, while the US does. (A recent Antiwar.com article helpfully explained, “both Russia and Canada claim that their respective Arctic sea-routes traverse their sovereign internal waters, giving them the right to control who goes through and under what conditions. The US disagrees and claims they should be open to ships of all nations as critical international sea lanes, based on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).” But, the US hasn’t even ratified UNCLOS.)
Ottawa even sees China as a threat near the South Pole. Over the past year Ottawa has intervened to undercut Canadian firms from selling Argentinean and Chilean resources to Chinese companies. They’ve taken similar measures against mining companies partnering with Chinese counterparts in Ecuador and Guinea. As the Financial Post detailed this week in “Mining companies leaving Toronto Stock Exchange”, restricting mining firms from partnering with Chinese companies is imperiling Canada’s international mining dominance.
Canada is assisting Washington in its conflict with China as the US president seeks to destroy Canada’s economy to annex the country. Why are no mainstream commentators denouncing this flagrant absurdity? Why would Canada’s military continue to do Washington’s bidding? If our government was serious about its independence wouldn’t that include revisiting our military’s attachment to US foreign policy?
At minimum, political leaders need to be calling on Ottawa to pause joint naval patrols with the US in Asia until Trump stops calling for the annexation of Canada.
Yves Engleris the author of 13 books. His latest book, available now, is “Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy”.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files is the country’s only news outlet focused on Canadian foreign policy. We’ve provided critical investigations & hard-hitting analysis on Canadian foreign policy since 2019, and need your support.
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Trump’s trade war against the US’s neighbors Mexico and Canada, as well as China, continues with sweeping tariffs on the three countries going into effect just after midnight on Tuesday, March 4. A 25% tariff was added on all imports from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on imports from China.
On March 5, Trump granted a one-month exemption on imports from Mexico and Canada for US automakers, following a conversation with the three largest auto manufacturers in the country: Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis, according to an announcement by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Other levies remain in place.
Escalating trade tensions between Canada and the United States have ignited a new wave of Canadian patriotism, with consumers consciously choosing made-in-Canada products as an act of economic self-preservation and national pride.
U.S. President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on most Canadian and Mexican goods on Tuesday. This, along with Trump’s calls to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, has prompted Canadians to rally around the so-called “Buy Canadian” movement.
Recent research indicates a significant number of Canadians are now showing a strong preference for domestic products, with many willing to modify their purchasing behaviours.
Everyone knows the 2003 American invasion of Iraq was about oil, but no one can quite explain how?[1] And though time is quickly running out on a liveable future,[2] it is now possible to untangle one of history’s greatest crimes: The US invasion was not about stealing Iraq’s oil; it was about keeping Iraqi oil off the world market to maximize the value of 175 billion barrels of newly-‘proven’ Alberta bitumen, which became the fraudulent collateral predatorily lent as subprime mortgages that soon cheated millions of Americans out of their homes. Only by understanding this grand imperial bezzle[3] can we hope to thwart it before the clock runs out on our species’ prospects for sustainability.
Fraudulent Collateral & Private Lending
Something strange happened in the world of banking the same year the United States committed the supreme international crime of aggression, invading and occupying Iraq.[4] Absent from the mainstream discussion of the resulting 2007-2008 housing market crash was any curiosity about why so few lenders went bankrupt while trillions in bad mortgages cheated Americans out of eight million homes.[5]
To solve these mysteries, we need an understanding of the imperial nature of Western banking and accounting: Whenever a bank makes a loan, it is thereby creating new money.[6] This is an incredible power, only shared by the full-faith-and-credit of the sovereign state. Private bankers operate in Canada based on letters from the British king and prefer to obscure the nature and unaccountability of their private power. To this day, neoclassical economists pretend that money and banking are not important parts of the economy: “Among the blind, the cross-eyed man is king”[7] is a phrase that may often remain true, but we are not obligated to wear the blinders of the imperial mandarins posing as economists. As former banker and historian Michael Hudson has repeatedly emphasized, banks extend most loans against existing real estate and securities.[8] This makes the shifting dynamic of legal collateral’s market-value especially consequential in an ever more financialized world.
Until the 1970s, oil reserves were not regarded as legal collateral. That changed with Alberta’s brief escape from the death grip of American empire and the end of the international gold standard in August 1971. Reflecting the imperial power involved, “The first institution to adopt asset based lending to the oil industry by securing hydrocarbon reserves seems to be lost in history”.[9] From this obscure birth came a disastrous idea: private banks lending to unaccountable (foreign) oil companies.
“Any convention of oilmen will result mainly in a desire on their part to have legalized some control which is illegal,” President Herbert Hoover wrote to his interior secretary in 1930, “otherwise they would do it themselves.”[10] John Rockefeller Jr. was honest enough in his 1941 PhD thesis at his father’s University of Chicago: “When the corporate form is used to facilitate monopoly control and financial gain through pseudo-legal manipulations, it leads to a wasteful use of resources from the social point of view, but the individual firm may be benefitted.”[11]
According a former banking regulator, it is neoclassical economic theory itself that optimizes criminogenic environments that produce or lead to crime.[12] Lending money to foreign oil companies creates money out of thin air and hands it to foreign shareholders, while Canadians repay the loans themselves with tomorrow’s locked-in carbon production. Canadians are robbed twice on the way to Armageddon: first they take the oil without paying for it and then borrow a fortune which Canadians must repay. This disastrous idea is rampant in Alberta and is set to kill us all.
On the eve of Alberta’s brief escape from the US empire’s clutches and the end of the gold standard, securities manipulation was so common in Canada that its unfavourable reputation posed its own threat to investment. Somehow, criminal prosecution of Canadian securities fraud faded even further after the US’ Watergate scandal[13] (it was an important imperial turning point, as we see below). By the 1980s, attempted reform sought to counter the fact that modern corporation had become “a weapon in white-collar crime”.[14] Leading economists soon recognized that something they called “Bankruptcy for profit will occur if poor accounting, lax regulation, or low penalties for abuse give owners an incentive to pay themselves more than their firms are worth and then default on their debt obligations.”[15]
Much like compradors who exploit the natural tendency to assume the good faith of fellow citizens, “Control frauds exploit the naive belief that a controlling owner will not loot ‘his’ firm.”[16] Regulatory paladin Bill Black has since had his revolutionary Control Fraud Theory – tens of thousands of criminal referrals & 1,700 convicted banksters as a result – expanded by June Carbone to the even more wholistic Control Predation. Theirs is the proper frame for these crimes and a guide on how to thwart them.[17]
As the Brookings Institute warned after the Saving & Loan Crisis a generation ago, “If we learn from experience, history need not repeat itself.”[18] For selfish reasons, Western imperialists have not allowed anyone to learn those lessons – and in 2003, $9 trillion dollars in stolen Alberta bitumen became legal collateral for the Rockefellers’ use. Then-US Energy Secretary Edward Abraham told Alberta the same day Marines pulled down Saddam’s statue in Baghdad, ‘From now on, when the Americans talked oil, they would be counting the reserves sitting beneath the forests of northern Alberta.’[19]
This is unleveraged pseudo-legal collateral without regulatory strings attached
(Canadian banks typically extend loans against half proven reserves; in the US, banks lend up to 75 per cent and more.)
Caption: Price per barrel (from NI 51-101 in fall`03 to crash fall`07).
The real objective of the US invasion of Iraq was to keep their cheap production off the market to avoid tanking prices from the deluge of Alberta bitumen production coming onstream, a result of production ramping up since the late 1990s.[20]The same day Marines pulled down Saddam Hussein’s statue, completing the occupation, the US officially recognized 175 billion barrels of bitumen reserves as proven and thus legal collateral for private money creation: April 9, 2003. “There is no such thing in economic life as a nonfinancial event”, James Galbraith reminds us, so “Finance is the only way to understand the economy.” It is also true “Allowing the bubble is tantamount to enabling the subsequent crash” and “The point of regulation is to keep a potentially unstable system operating within safe limits so far as these can be known.”[21] “In the lead-up to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008,” nonetheless, “the US accumulated a gargantuan mountain of new mortgage debt, totalling $5 trillion.”[22]
The creation of trillions in new and free legal collateral was instantaneous on September 26, 2003, when NI 51-101 came into force. But it’s much worse than just a mere $9 trillion. Initially, much was spent building enormous bitumen projects, but now that the construction phase has ended, foreign borrowing has only increased. These loans roll over every 3-5 years and revolving lines of credit continue spinning as long as the carbon keeps getting dug up. Trillions in stolen collateral are repaid in a handful of years with Canadians’ own oil. “The primary aim of today’s commercial and central banking, especially since 2008,” Michael Hudson informs us, “has been to fuel capital gains by more credit/debt creation. The financial sector’s returns are best seen not as real wealth on the asset side of the balance sheet, but as overheads on the liabilities side.”[23]
Just like during the Saving & Loan Crisis, the game after 2003 was to make bad loans to drive up the price level of real estate and corporate stocks, to capture loot as capital gains. Within one year of the financialization of trillions in Alberta bitumen (highlights added):
“Rampant fraud in the [US] mortgage industry has increased so sharply that the FBI warned … of an ‘epidemic’ of financial crimes which, if not curtailed, could become ‘the next S&L crisis.’ Assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said the booming mortgage market, fueled by low interest rates and soaring home values, has attracted unscrupulous professionals and criminal groups whose fraudulent activities could cause multibillion-dollar losses to financial institutions.”[24]
The domestic and international carnage of the 2008 global financial crisis was extensive. But hope was unexpectedly born in Alberta in 2015. That hope came when the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) was elected in a surprise backlash against Premier Jim Prentice calling an early election, after the leader of the opposition crossed the floor to join his government. “Once [NDP Premier Rachel] Notley came to power, though, it became increasingly clear that very little would change. Big Oil continued to rule the day.”[25]
During the Alberta NDP’s fraudulent 2015 royalty review, cleanup was not being accounted for by industry in its securities reporting,[26] banks were relaxing loan conditions across the board,[27] and industry was threatening mass bankruptcy: The November 2015 failure of Spyglass Resources was “the first for a conventional Calgary-based oil and gas producer in the current downturn and raises questions about how the province will deal with well reclamation liabilities if the trend continues.”[28] Alberta Treasury Branches CEO and royalty review chair Dave Mowat threatened to go rogue in December 2015 if NDP government did not publish energy economist Peter Tertzakian’s fraudulent royalty report lowering the world’s lowest royalty rates even further.[29] To their eternal shame, the Alberta NDP published the fraudulent royalty review and then lowered royalties a couple more times that summer for good measure.[30]
What’s more, climate change means that most of the collateral against which banks lend to the oil industry cannot be responsibly produced within the limits of climate change.[31] Which is to say, most of the industry’s collateral is fraudulent. “Now that the reality that banks create money is acknowledged,” Steve Keen advises, “so too must be the role of the finance sector in creating asset price bubbles and financial crises, and in enabling the accumulation and concealment of wealth.” A proper understanding of the oil and gas and bitumen industries in real life requires the incorporation of private money creation – a tantalizing opportunity put within grasp by Keen’s system dynamics software Minsky.[32]
Even the most sophisticated critics of capitalism still assume “serious bankers will not finance industries that require expensive capital assets unless there is some believable guarantee that price will not fall to marginal cost”.[33] Unfortunately, as Nature has since reported, the “prevailing business culture in the banking industry favours dishonest behaviour”.[34] And the same could be said of other imperial industries like oil. Recently, researchers inadvertently proved that banks lend to oil and gas companies without regard for cleanup.[35] It is that imperial impunity that inevitably results in economic crashes. According to the top study by a lifelong banker: “Private debt is key, and the story of financial crisis is, at heart, a story of private debt and runaway lending. Time and again it is a story of lending booms in which bankers and other lenders make far too many bad loans.”[36]
As the former president of the American Sociological Society, Edwin Sutherland, warned in his classic study (which did not dare mention the oil industry, but was nonetheless still censored for decades): “White Collar Crime Is Organized Crime”.[37] The same can be said for imperialism, which is largely a financial affair – in our case taking its loot in the form of capital gains fed by fraudulent loans built atop free collateral gifted by letters from the king.
Independence & Democracy
Genuine independence and democracy both presuppose popular control of resources, without which sovereignty is an illusion and politics merely the shadow cast by rentiers, bankers, and other imperialists.[38] Fortunately, imperialism’s secrecy and bad faith are also clues from which solutions to many of their unsolved crimes can be deduced: We rarely know what imperialists are up to at any given moment, but in hindsight it very soon becomes apparent they are most active on the anniversaries of prior achievements. This investigation of Canadian sovereignty begins with a single declassified document and a single logical assumption, from which its hypothesis will be proven or disproven by the historical record. If Imperialism happens on Anniversaries, as our hypothesis here proposes, then with enough episodes and the inspiration of Leo Tolstoy,[39] we may be able to derive enough glimpses of imperialist actions directly from logic and our definition to objectively describe important elements of secretive and slippery bad faith imperialism, and the related utilization of timing by the western world’s managers to send quiet political messages.
We begin our investigation with a Rosetta Stone of a declassified document, penned by Canada’s leading military historian, C.P. Stacey, the American-trained censor for the Canadian Army in 1954. When it comes to the Ogdensburg Treaty signed by the United States and Canada August 18, 1940, “The dates of meetings … and other related details, must not be referred to in documents intended for publication unless and until formal clearance is received from the Sovereign or the Governor General”.[40] That date and treaty are this study’s starting point, a confirmed glimpse of imperialism.[41] By this study’s proposed definition, those involved are confirmed Imperialists and the content of their activity that Anniversary is confirmed Imperialism. From there, all that is required to test our hypothesis is the rule of logical deduction, modus ponens – Latin for “mode that by affirming affirms”.
Proving Imperialists did Imperialism on a given Anniversary helps prove other Imperialists did other Imperialism on other Anniversaries – by affirming Anniversaries, Imperialists affirm Imperialism and, by affirming Imperialists, Anniversaries affirm Imperialism, etc. Iteratively, this network of known dates and actors generate a factual record that spans a millennium and reveals obvious patterns centred around 29 important milestones in the evolution of the ultimate imperial conspiracy of avoiding debts, the rule of law, and democracy.(Appendix A – Imperial Anniversaries) The systematic study of official Canadian and US censorship of as it relates to these 29 obvious imperial Anniversaries produces more than four hundred episodes.(Appendix B – Differentiated Episodes)The sum of these findings is frightening (Appendix C – Chronology), but it also offers the prospect of increasing our understanding of how modern day imperialism is conducted, in the bid to defeat the worst outcomes imperialists have in store for us.
Editor’s note: The Canada Files does not vouch for the validity of the three appendixes, which have been submitted to a professional journal for peer-review.
The Odd Fellows Conspiracy
British elites established a secret society January 6, 1798, to further their aim of reuniting their white-skinned empire again after the American revolution. They called themselves Oddfellows, and by 1817, they had initiated the American Odd Fellows in Baltimore. Canada was the bountiful hinterland British Oddfellows were offering as dowry to the US Odd Fellows to seal their empires’ remarriage. By 1826, American agitation against the secret society spread to Canada, and despite the Oddfellows’ best efforts, legislation was passed outlawing the supposed fraternity. Unfortunately, the British king at the time was an Oddfellow himself and refused the Canadian legislation.[42] Canada was not allowed to protect itself from the Anglo-American conspiracy, which continued apace.
On the eve of the US Civil War, the second most important member of the American Democratic Party, Secretary of State William Seward met with Abraham Lincoln, while the New York Times held its front page for the president’s response.[43] Seward’s April 1, 1861, memorandum suggested foreign conquest instead of civil war – but the US president chose to vanquish the southern states first. The infamous memo remained a secret until February 1888, a few months before Cecil Rhodes started DeBeers Mining and the Canadian Senate heard evidence of the world’s largest oilfield in what would become northern Alberta on May 2, 1888. By then, the South Improvement Company conspiracy that began February 26, 1872, had made Standard Oil’s John D. Rockefeller the most powerful man in the world and arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes (who founded the De Beers diamond monopoly with Rothschild financing) had begun funding a second UK-US conspiracy to federate their empires under American leadership: The Round Table Conspiracy was born September 19, 1877. By April 1898, Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier’s Liberal Party had secretly enabled the sale of Imperial Oil to the Rockefellers, by 1902 the Canadian prime minister was asserting America’s Monroe Doctrine had already been applied, and by 1917 Laurier lamented that “Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London, known as “The Round Table””.[44]
The Round Table Conspiracy
The First World War brought censorship August 22, 1914 – an essential component of foreign control that was vigorously imposed by Canada’s first official censor, previously managing editor and publisher of the Calgary Herald.[45] In what would become a common theme in Canadian history, Canada’s longest-serving prime minister (1921-30 and 1935-48), William Mackenzie King, was re-installed into the Liberal Party at a new-style leadership convention August 7, 1919 – shortly after returning to Canada from five years in the employ of the Rockefellers.[46] John Brownlee was also installed as Alberta premier in a “well-mannered backstairs revolt” on November 23, 1925. Canada’s other major political party, the Conservatives, was captured by the Americans in another new-style leadership convention October 12, 1927, that installed Rockefeller executive in Calgary, Richard B. Bennett, who had mentored a young Brownlee 15 years earlier and would serve as Prime Minister in Mackenzie King’s stead (1930-35, creating the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation [CBC] and Bank of Canada).[47]
Ernest Manning was a 24-year-old bible college graduate – no members of the Social Credit party Manning organized had previously been members of legislature – installed as Alberta’s acting premier on August 22, 1935, after premier Brownlee resigned amidst a fake scandal breathlessly embellished by a deeply yellow Alberta press.[48] As thanks, dozens of Albertan newspapers received the only Pulitzers ever given outside the US on May 3, 1938.[49] Imperialism and honest journalism are obviously incompatible. That yellow press also enabled Americans to lock in their gains. After a special session of the provincial legislature, Alberta’s new American-staffed oil and gas regulator was placed above the law November 22, 1938: the regulator did not have to hold hearings, or even publish its decisions, and could not be appealed to any court.[50] Before entering the Second World War, the US had quietly secured control of the world’s largest oilfield.
It did not go unnoticed by locals but was soon entrenched nonetheless, with the help of the also foreign-controlled federal government. A commission of inquiry had been announced in October 1938into Alberta’s new oil and gas regulator, but its author (Alberta Supreme Court Chief Justice Alexander McGillivray) was assassinated December 12, 1940, after Imperial Oil had published his sage inquiry June 14, 1940.[51] The US then cemented their control over Alberta’s oil by treaty. Two years to the day of receiving an honourary degree from Mackenzie King, Franklin Roosevelt invited the prime minister alone to Ogdensburg, New York, where the US President and his secretary of war had been drilling 100,000 troops on the Canadian border. Mackenzie King signed a treaty permanently subordinating Canada to the US on August 18, 1940, without any contact with the remainder of his cabinet or government.
In case there were any lingering doubts about the actual meaning of the Ogdensburg Treaty, it was signed a second time the day before Alberta’s largest oil discovery, Leduc #1, on February 12, 1947.[52]
In his last press interview, Leon Trotsky warned “North American militarism will be the most grandiose in all history” and “It will begin by inheriting the British Empire.”[53] Trotsky was assassinated a few days after Ogdensburg by the Canadian boyfriend of one of Trotsky’s New York friends who had walked past the American bodyguards with a mountaineering axe under a folded trench-coat, despite the nice weather.[54] Within weeks of Manning’s installation in 1935, President Roosevelt’s heir apparent, Louisiana Senator Huey P. Long, similarly met his end in a hail of bullets September 8, 1935 – despite having declared from the Senate floor that the American President promised to pardon whoever killed him. Long’s assassination has remained unsolved.[55]
The Second World War & Its Aftermath
The British had lured the United States into the First World War with a supposedly intercepted cable (more likely forged) on the imperial anniversary January 19, 1917. But things were different the second time around. Britain’s top spy had learned of Japan’s plans to attack Pearl Harbor and tried to warn the FBI’s Herbert Hoover, who informed the British he did not need any help.[56] A few weeks before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Alberta’s only bitumen project burned to the ground, and a few weeks after imperial Japan’s attack, 40,000 US troops occupied Western Canada until premier Manning finally perfected US control on January 26, 1949, after the Atlantic #3 disaster of March-September 1948.
What would later become Alberta’s New Democratic Party (Cooperative Commonwealth Federation), appeared to blow the whistle March 2, 1948, declaring “when God placed beneath our feet these great pools of wealth for the enjoyment of us all, he did not put up a sign “Reserved for the Imperial Oil.”” Manning’s government lost a confidence vote the next day, but instead of reform, Albertans got the largest onshore oil spill in Canadian history a few days later. Within weeks, Manning had promised Alberta would never collect more than one-sixth of the revenue of our oil and gas.[57] As if aided by some higher power, Ernest Manning’s 1948 promise somehow still remains true today:
That precipitous climb in locals’ share of royalty revenue during Lougheed’s 1970s illustrates the tragedy that struck the American empire in August 1971 with the opening of a small window of political independence for Alberta. Peter Lougheed had announced his candidacy for leadership of Alberta’s Progressive Conservative Party on February 9, 1965, and negotiations to swallow Lougheed’s party into Manning’s Social Credit failed in December 1966.[59] With a local billionaire patron of his own (the Mannix family), Peter Lougheed could not be beaten in a fair fight, so the Rockefellers’ lacky Ernest Manning retired to start a consulting agency with his second son, Preston Manning, on December 16, 1967. Before the Social Credit era ended, however, the Mannings and their American patrons placed John Nichol at Alberta’s oil and gas regulator as a trojan horse in 1970overseeing minimal drilling standards.[60]
Alberta’s Window of Democracy & Rule of Law, 1971-85
Though imperial forces in the US were under increased scrutiny with the New York Times publishing the Pentagon Papers beginning June 13, 1971,[61] the integration of imperial forces into the US state apparatus after WWII began to be unwound. Imperialism was in the process of being privatized again. On the 753rd anniversary of Magna Carta coming into force September 11, 1970, a former head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Frank McCone, offered $1 million from the corporation he now ran to help overthrow the elected government in Chile.[62] On September 11, 1971, the FBI informant that would set off the fake Watergate scandal gave his first media interviews to pose as an heir to the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover and increase the credibility of his future leaks.[63] The coup in Chile took place September 11, 1973, demonstrating the American imperial state’s distaste for Magna Carta. Getting out while the getting was good, Nelson Rockefeller resigned from 15 years as New York Governor on December 12, 1973[64] – marking another imperial anniversary.
Four days after US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger received his requested intelligence review of Australia in preparation for a second coup against Western nations, President Nixon resigned onAugust 9, 1974. President Gerald Ford appointed Nelson Rockefeller vice president on August 20, 1974. So, when Ford pardoned Nixon on September 8, 1974, it extended to Mr. Rockefeller. And that just happened to fulfill the Senator Huey Long’s prophesied fate on the anniversary of his own demise.[65] By the next year, the Canadian government had been stripped of control of the Bank of Canada and finance minister John Turner resigned cabinet along with his parliamentary seat September 11, 1975. Not long afterwards, the elected government in Australia was replaced by the British Governor General invoking the king’s ancient reserve powers that had been re-affirmed on November 22, 1926. So that no one would forget, the coup took place in Australia on Remembrance Day of 1975, as its architects watched from the safety of pardoned retirement.[66]
In the lead up to its 1982 election, Alberta had another ‘accident’. On October 17, 1982, a sour well blew dangerously out of control, killing two, injuring 16, and burning for 68 days (through the remainder of the election campaign). Lougheed still won 75 of 78 seats in the provincial legislature on November 2, 1982, and the sour well was finally extinguished by American contractors on December 23, 1982. A month later, computer delays wreaked havoc at the Progressive Conservative national leadership convention, but former Lougheed ally Joe Clark still won the vote handily on January 26, 1983. Inexplicably Clark resigned anyway, making way for the Americans’ preferred candidate, Brian Mulroney. Meanwhile, US pressure continued to escalate.[67]
Next, Canada’s Chief Justice Bora Laskin died on March 26, 1984. And on September 4, 1984, Mulroney led the Progressive Conservative Party to the largest ever majority in Canadian Parliament. The leader of Alberta’s comprador NDP party was assassinated in a plane crash October 19, 1984,and Alberta Chief Justice William McGillivray was assassinated on December 16, 1984– almost the same day his fellow Chief Justice father had been killed in 1940. Lougheed initially resisted calls from the yellow press to resign, but eventually announced his retirement June 26, 1985. The window of Alberta independence was now closed; the real looting could now begin.
The $9 Trillion Crime, 1985-2007
Thrust onto the national stage for the first time by his American bosses during the 1983 Conservative Party leadership race after Clark quit, Quebec mining executive Brian Mulroney proved himself a bad faith comprador sent to realign Canada with the American orbit.[68] “In retrospect,” columnist Linda McQuaig lamented, “it may seem inevitable that Canada would follow the lead of US President Ronald Reagan who was aggressively promoting corporate interests south of the border. But Canada had a different political tradition”, however fleetingly, but especially under Trudeau and Lougheed. Under the US-installed Mulroney (1984-93) and Alberta premier Don Getty (1985-92), curious things began happening to Canadian banking. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) was established in July 1987.[69] Weeks later:
“two officers from the Bank of Canada … presented for the first time a rough draft of how the central bank could manage … a monetary system without any reserves … [the two officers] must have managed to convince their superiors at the Bank of Canada that such a project was feasible, because it was gradually put in place. … Compulsory reserve requirements were progressively diminished, until they were fully phased out in June 1994.”[70]
By the mid-1990s, imperialism’s Canadian banking friends had arranged a system ripe for looting and focus shifted to securities regulation. In June 1998, the Alberta Securities Commission appointed a seven-member taskforce to guide new oilfield disclosure rules. On January 24, 2001, the ASC Taskforce report was released the same day the Canadian oil lobby called for cleanup reforms to be delayed and a prominent set of compradors published an open letter to quisling premier Ralph Klein calling for increasing Alberta independence from the rest of Canada.[71] When the ASC produced a draft of National Instrument 51-101: Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities the next fall, its former chief accountant resigned. “I’m worried that if it goes through that way, I don’t want to be associated with it,” said Henry Lawrie. He said oil and gas companies should be required to adhere to a much more stringent set of requirements before reserves can be booked as “proved”.[72]
Those fears came true on the same day US marines pulled down Saddam’s statue in the Iraqi capital to complete the US occupation: April 9, 2003. That also happened to be the day Washington also formally recognized 175 billion more barrels of Alberta’s bitumen as “proven” for the first time. Six months later, implementation of NI 51-101 in Ontario (most Canadian companies are traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, but other provincial stock exchanges soon followed) conjured almost $9 trillion dollars in new legal collateral on September 26, 2003. In less than a year, the FBI warned publiclyof an “epidemic” of financial crimes that could become “the next S&L crisis.” That was stolen Alberta collateral flooding America as its imperial troops held Iraqi production down and prices up, to maximize the value of Wall Street’s loot.
The summer before NI 51-101, on June 28, 2003, personal liability for cleanup was lifted for Alberta oilpatch executives. Then, on the Rockefellers’ favorite anniversary, August 19, 2003, it was reported that wellsites in Alberta were no longer going to be inspected before being certified as reclaimed by Alberta ‘regulators’ – blindly releasing industry from liability and ensuring citizens will be saddled with the inevitable expenses.[73] Financially speaking, Alberta oil was now as good as gold – and in American hands. Without having to worry about royalties or cleanup, the billions of barrels of bitumen US-installed leaders gave away to foreigners has joined gold as the only liability-less assets. This has been of no small consequence to subsequent world events.
Canada’s unexplained, unremarked, and unique banking system just happens to be ideal for concealing trillions in cross-border looting. Private clearing of bank transactions outside the Bank of Canada means there is no double-entry bookkeeping in Canadian finance.[74] By the 1980s, the oil and gas and bitumen industries were borrowing ~$2 billion from Canadian banks. But by the end of Ralph Klein’s 1990s, new bitumen development raised that to ~$10 billion. And since the time NI 51-101 has been in full flight from the early 2000s, industry borrowing has consistently been in the $100 billion range. Quisling Alberta premier Jason Kenney dismantled the last of Alberta’s oilfield liability management regime[75] before handing the keys to the province’s governing party to fellow Manning family protégé, Danielle Smith. Since, the quisling Smith has returned Alberta to full US colony status and industry’s annual borrowing exploded 40 per cent to $140 billion; total theft from Canadian banks since the 2015 Paris climate agreement now exceeds $1.2 trillion CAD.[76]
Past as Predicate? Alaska and Greenland
To send an imperial message about their displeasure at Canadian steps towards independence, the United States paid 25 times more than necessary to purchase Alaska from Russia the day after British legislation created a new Dominion on March 30, 1867 (though the country didn’t formally came into existence until Canada Day: July 1, 1867).[77] Pearl Harbor offered the opportunity to make good on age-old American threats of continental conquest, and US occupation has continued quietly in one form or another since. In the 1920s, the US share of foreign capital invested in Canada more than tripled at the expense of the British. As a prominent American journalist put it, “We shall not make Britain’s mistake. Too wise to try to govern the world, we shall merely own it. Nothing can stop us. Nothing until our financial empire rots at its heart, as empires have a way of doing.”[78]
Just before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Alberta’s only commercial bitumen project burned down in November 1941. The Abasand project was rebuilt again with the federal taxpayer funds but razed again on the 728th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta on June 15, 1945. The federal government got the message and returned the licenses for 175 billion barrels of oil for premier Ernest Manning to disperse to his American patrons for free.[79] With American interests again in ascendency in Canada today, more Canadian production is both desired by the US and offered by its local quislings like premier Danielle Smith, who promised to double Alberta production the same day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned under US pressure[80] – leaving the next election an appealing situation for the US’ preferred candidate, fellow Manning family-creation Pierre Poilievre.
If Mr. Poilievre does not win Canada’s next federal election, there is very good reason to expect US President Donald Trump to purchase Greenland to register his displeasure. “For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World,” Trump announced on Christmas Eve of 2024, “the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity.”[81]
The truth about Canada is dark, but it has a silver lining: Understanding the scale of the theft ends forever the question of how to pay for needed reforms. The answer is popular control of resource rent. That would also seriously hamper many imperialist machinations. Even as the American boot grows heavier on Canadian necks, Peter Lougheed pioneered a path to follow towards double-entry bookkeeping, meaningful democracy, and a decent future. It is long-past time to euthanize rentiers and other imperialists once and for all.[82] Otherwise, it will soon be too late for a liveable future. Fortunately, system dynamics could be an incredibly powerful tool for navigating a carbon budget, understanding banking, and thwarting financial imperialism.
System dynamics has also been imperialists’ single greatest tool ever since it was discovered by the US navy in 1902; Britain revealed its knowledge of system dynamics as soon as the First World War began and Russia soon followed suit.[83] System dynamics has been used ever since by imperialists to maximize their power through efficiently maximizing resource production, instead of conserving within the bounds of climate change.[84] System dynamics is also the core of artificial intelligence, which has recently been foisted upon the wider public. Silicon Valley and AI enabled the latest episode of colonial genocide in Palestine.[85] Going forward, the US empire plans AI powered by free Alberta energy as its competitive advantage as American imperialists run civilization off the climate cliff.[86] The hour is late, but our last chance to salvage a decent future may yet remain.
References & Excerpts
[1]Greenspan 2007_pp. 462-63:“It should be obvious that as long as the United States is beholden to potentially unfriendly sources of oil and gas, we are vulnerable to economic crises over which we have little control. … all credible longer-term forecasts conclude that to continue on the path of world growth over the next quarter century at rates commensurate with those of the past quarter century will require between one-fourth and two-fifths more oil than we use today. Most of this oil will have to come from politically volatile regions because, as we have seen, that is where most of the readily extractable oil resides. … whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the world economy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Former Federal Reserve Chairman (1987-2006) Alan Greenspan The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a new world New York: Penguin 2007;
Muttit 2018_pp. 333-34: “The evidence shows rather that the US and UK interest was in enabling foreign investment in Iraq’s under-developed oilfields to increase global supplies and contain the oil price, without leaving Saddam Hussein’s hand on the tap. … in terms of outcomes, the record of success is decidedly mixed … primary oil objective … was ultimately achieved, albeit … non-optimally from the US/UK perspective … a larger share of contracts went to Chinese and other non-western companies” Oil Change International Senior Advisor Greg Muttit “No blood for oil, revisited: The strategic role of oil in the 2003 Iraq War”International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies v12#3 (September 2018): 319-39;
Muttit 2012 Greg Muttit Fuel on the Fire: Oil and politics in occupied Iraq New York: New Press 2012
[2]Hegel 1820_pp. 23, 392n31: “the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk” … ‘The owl is the sacred bird of Minerva (Greek: Athena), goddess of wisdom. The apparent meaning of this famous saying is that a culture’s philosophical understanding reaches its peak only when the culture enters its decline.‘ … “Philosophy always comes too late to issue instructions on how the world ought to be.”Georg W.F. Hegel (trans.) Allen W. Wood Elements of the Philosophy of Right (ed.) H.B. Nisbet (1820; Cambridge: Cambridge University 1991)
[3]NP 30/11/19: “John Kenneth Galbraith used [“bezzle”] to describe a form of theft that comes with a time lag. In other words, you don’t know you’ve been robbed until much later. In his classic book, The Great Crash of 1929, he says, “Weeks, months or years may elapse between the commission of the crime and its discovery.“ … Galbraith went on to note that during the period of the bezzle, “The embezzler has his gain and the man who has been embezzled, oddly enough, feels no loss. There is a net increase in psychic wealth.”” Tom Bradley “Beware the ‘bezzle’”National Post (30 November 2019): FP6;
Mint 19/11/18: “in colonial era, most of India’s sizeable foreign exchange earnings went straight to London severely hampering the country’s ability to import machinery & technology to embark on modernisation” Ajai Sreevatsan “British Raj siphoned out $45 trillion from India: Utsa Patnaik”Mint (19 November 2018);
Al Jazeera 19/12/18 Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Professor Jason Hickel “How Britain stole $45 trillion from India: And lied about it”Al Jazeera (19 December 2018);
[4]Kramer, Michalowski & Roth 2005 Ronald Kramer, Raymond Michalowski and Dawn Roth ““The Supreme International Crime”: How the US war in Iraq threatens the rule of law”Social Justice v32#2 (2005): 52-81
[5]NPR 23/1/20:10 or 16 million Americans “lost their homes — but those houses and apartments didn’t disappear into thin air. Journalist Aaron Glantz studied what happened after the crash for his book: Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream … “You have 8 million homes that were lost during the foreclosure crisis and they didn’t just disappear,” Glantz said. “When you look at the people who bought these homes, you’re not necessarily talking about mom and pop landlords here. Oftentimes, you’re talking about major speculative interests from Wall Street.” Glantz said the rise of this new corporate class of homeowners is unprecedented in the US. “We have three million homes and more than 10 million apartment units in America that are owned by LLC, LLP and shell companies,” he said. “Back in the 90s, well over 90% of homes were owned by people. This is no longer the case.”” Courtney Collins “What happened to all the homes lost during the foreclosure crisis?” North Texas National Public Radio Kera News (23 January 2020)
[6]McLeay, Radia & Thomas 2014p. 14 Michael McLeay, Amar Radia and Ryland Thomas “Money creation in the modern economy”Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1 (14 March 2014): 14-27
[7]Erasmus 1536Desiderius Erasmus Adagia (III, IV, 96) in William Barker(ed.) The Adages of Erasmus(1500-36; Toronto: University of Toronto 2001): 276-77
[8]Hudson 2012_pp. 4, 7: “Most loans are for mortgages to inflate land prices. … Despite the transformative role that finance has played … mainstream economists treat markets as if most money is paid for goods and services, not real estate, bonds, stocks, or other assets.” Michael Hudson “Veblen’s institutionalist elaboration of rent theory” Bard College Levy Economics Institute Working Paper #729 (August 2012): 23pp
[9]Fox, Gonsoulin & Price 2014_pp. 3-4: “the US upstream finance market started much earlier than its international counterpart. … The first institution to adopt asset based lending to the oil industry by securing hydrocarbon reserves seems to be lost in history … Critical to the development of reserve based lending in the US was the ability of banks to have asset-level perfected security through a mortgage on the underlying field because of the unusual circumstance that it is generally possible for the debtor to own the hydrocarbons outright. … The US market expanded significantly in the 1970s as oil prices increased. … lenders would loan to an entity that had a specific set of producing assets that generated cash flow that would be paid directly to the lender. In the early 1980s, however, lenders became more competitive and the modern day borrowing base structure emerged. Borrowers were now allowed to receive their production proceeds directly and revolving lines of credit became the norm.” Jason Fox, Dewey Gonsoulin and Kevin Price “A tale of two markets”pt1 of “Reserve based finance” Oil & Gas Financial Journal (January 2014): 6pp
[10]Hoover 6/12/30President Herbert Hoover to Secretary of the Interior Ray Wilbur (6 December 1930) cited in Kendrick A. Clements “Herbert Hoover and conservation, 1921-33” American Historical Review v89#1 (February 1984): 79n34
[11]Rockefeller 1941_p. 99David Rockefeller Unused Resources and Economic Waste 1941University of Chicago PhD Thesis
[12] Bill Black was litigation director of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, senior VP and General Counsel of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Senior Deputy Chief Counsel, Office of Thrift Supervision. He was deputy director of the National Commission on Financial Institution Reform, Recovery and Enforcement.Black 2011William K. Black “Neo-classical economic theories, methodology, and praxis optimize criminogenic environments and produce recurrent, intensifying crises”Creighton Law Review v44#3 (June 2011): 597-645
[13]Hagan & Parker 1985_pp. 303, 312-13: “So common that by the mid-1960s Canada had earned an unfavorable international reputation for securities manipulation that itself posed a threat to investment (La Prairie, 1979). This led to a strengthening of enforcement efforts, including passage of the Ontario Securities Act of 1966 (see Johnston, 1977). These efforts have in the last year included an investigation by the Ontario Securities Commission of Conrad Black, Chairman of the giant Argus Corporation and reputedly the most powerful corporate entrepreneur in Canada (Newman, 1982); as well as an investigation of the multinational participants in a set of real-estate transactions involving the block sale of over 10,000 Toronto apartments eventually valued at over a half billion dollars. Although neither of these investigations has led to a criminal conviction, both have attracted the attention of the national (Globe and Mail, 1983a, 1983b) and international press (Wall Street Journal, 1983a, 1983b, 1983c) and helped stimulate the current research. … Employers are instead more likely to be charged with Securities Act violations that carry less stigma and lower sentence exposure. Subsequent analyses revealed that these patterns were most noticeable following Watergate. This was an era in which the enforcement of securities laws increased, with a new emphasis on large, organized offenses committed by managers as well as employers. Employers apparently were spared some of the consequences of this increased prosecution through the use of Securities Act rather than Criminal Code charges.” University of Toronto Professor Emeritus of Law and Sociology John Hagan and University of Toronto Faculty of Law Senior Research Associate Patricia Parker “White-collar crime and punishment: The class structure and legal sanctioning of securities violations”American Sociological Review v50#3 (June 1985): 302-316
[14]Wheeler & Rothman 1982_pp. 1406, 1422: “the [corporation], size and profitably notwithstanding, is for white-collar criminals what the gun or knife is for the common criminal—a tool to obtain money from victims. … the organizational form itself, and public perceptions warped by image-making, combine to give the organization a heightened sense of legitimacy.” Stanton Wheeler and Mitchell L. Rothman “The organization as a weapon in white-collar crime”Michigan Law Review v80#7 (June 1982): 1403-26;
Howcroft1986Nigel J. Howcroft “Scope of fraudulent conveyances and fraudulent preferences legislation in Alberta”Alberta Law Review v24#3 (February 1986): 496-509
[15]Akerlof & Romer 1993_p. 2: “Our theoretical analysis shows that an economic underground can come to life if firms have an incentive to go broke for profit at society’s expense (to loot) instead of to go for broke (to gamble on success).” 2001 ‘Nobel’-economist George A. Akerlof and 2018 ‘Nobel’-economist Paul R. Romer “Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit”Brookings Papers on Economic Activity v24#2 (1993): 1-73;
McMahon2014 Craig McMahon “Fraud and bankruptcy” Legal Education Society of Alberta (January 2014): 32pp [excerpt]
[16]Black 2003_pp. 26, 31-35: “The ability to secure extraordinary political power can be one of the most pernicious aspects of control frauds. … Voluntarily taking on a net liability is irrational … unless the purpose is to gain a vehicle for control fraud. … George Akerlof and Paul Romer provided the first formal economic model of when the wealth-optimizing strategy for the controlling owner-CEO was to loot the firm. Unsurprisingly, it was when the firm had little, or negative, capital … Control frauds exploit the naive belief that a controlling owner will not loot “his” firm. … Control frauds increase outstanding debt because they are defrauding the creditors as well as the shareholders and because a ponzi scheme must grow or die.” William K. Black “Reexamining the law-and-economics theory of corporate governance” Challenge v46#2 (March/April 2003): 22-40
[17]Black 2005b_pp. 299-300: “My book explains how to conduct effective regulation and supervision and how to prosecute successfully the most elite financial criminals. It is a book about regulatory courage in the face of brutal, powerful opposition that goes far beyond making regulation “really hard.” It is an inspiring tale. A regulatory race to the bottom will generate regulatory leaders who are bottom feeders that lack the competence, integrity, and courage to take on control frauds and their political allies. We need a competition in integrity. … Teams of apolitical regulators of great competence and integrity can be recruited by worthy leaders in this nation within weeks. We ran a real world test of whether regulators or markets were most effective against control frauds. Regulators were vastly superior. … It is long past time to end the war on effective financial regulation and regulators that produces a self-fulfilling prophecy of regulatory failure. We cannot afford to continue to produce the toxic mix of the three D’s and modern executive compensation, a mix that creates a fraud-friendly environment and produces epidemics of control fraud that drive our continuing, intensifying financial crises.” William K. Black The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One: How corporate executives and politicians looted the S&L industry updated edn. (2005; Austin: University of Texas 2013);
Black 2006_pp. 248-49: “George Akerlof, the Nobel Laureate in Economics (2001) has opined that my book [Black 2005b] will be “a classic” because of its importance for economic theory and praxis. He concluded that control fraud theory overturned the conventional economic wisdom about the S&L debacle and had general applicability to explain waves of fraud in other nations. He believes such waves can cause bubbles to hyper inflate. … Two leading white-collar criminologists, Gil Geis and John Braithwaite, have praised control fraud theory for advancing our discipline” William K. Black “Control fraud theory v. the protocols”Crime, Law & Social Change v45#3 (April 2006): 241-58;
Carbone & Black 2020_Abstract: “Both corporate theory and sex discrimination law start with presumptions that CEOs seek to advance legitimate ends and design the internal organization of business enterprises to achieve such ends. Yet, a growing literature questions why CEOs and boards of directors nonetheless select for Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and toxic masculinity, despite the downsides associated with these traits. Three scholarly literatures—economics, criminology, and gender theory—draw on advances in psychology to shed new light on the construction of seemingly dysfunctional corporate cultures. They start by questioning the assumption that CEOs—even CEOs of seemingly mainstream businesses—necessarily seek to advance “legitimate” ends. Instead, they suggest that a persistent issue is predation: the exploitation of asymmetries in information and power to the disadvantage of shareholders, creditors, customers, or employees. These literatures then explore how such CEOs may rationally choose to employ seemingly dysfunctional practices, such as “masculinity contests,” which reward employees more likely to buy into ethically dubious activities that range from predatory lending to sexual harassment. This Article maintains that questioning the presumption of legitimacy has profound and largely unexplored implications for corporate theory and anti-discrimination law. It extends the theory of “control fraud” central to white-collar criminology to a new concept of “control predation” that includes conduct that is ethicallyobjectionable, if not necessarily illegal. This Article concludes that only by questioning the legitimacy of these practices in business terms can gender theory adequately address women’s workplace equality” June Carbone and William K. Black “The problem with predators”Seattle University Law Review v43#2 (Winter 2020): 441-96
[18]Akerlof & Romer 1993p. 60 2001 ‘Nobel’-economist George A. Akerlof and 2018 ‘Nobel’-economist Paul R. Romer “Looting: The economic underworld of bankruptcy for profit”Brookings Papers on Economic Activity v24#2 (1993): 1-73
[19]G&M 26/1/8: “Murray Smith remembers what happened on the morning of April 9, 2003, the way other Canadians remember Paul Henderson’s miracle goal against the Russians [in 1972]. For Mr. Smith, then Alberta’s energy minister, the big score was a letter from his federal counterpart south of the border. It was about the oil sands – a resource that had long been underestimated at home and almost ignored internationally. No more, US energy secretary Spencer Abraham wrote.” Erin Anderssen, Shawn McCarthy and Eric Reguly “An empire from a tub of goo: How did the quest to retrieve the treasure hidden beneath huge swaths of northern Alberta go from fool’s errand to monumentous payoff?”pt1 of “Shifting sands: How Alberta’s oil boom changed Canada forever” Globe and Mail (26 January 2008): F1, F4-5;
Atkins & MacFadyen 2008Frank J. Atkins and Alan J. MacFadyen “A resource whose time has come? The Alberta oil sands as an economic resource”Energy Journal v29 (special issue 2008): 77-98
[20]Boychuk 2010bp. 31: Regan Boychuk “Misplaced generosity: Extraordinary profits in Alberta’s oil and gas industry” University of Alberta Parkland Institute (November 2010): 52pp
Source: Capital as Power
[21]Galbraith 2014_pp. 87-92, 81, 150, 153-54, 167: “consider the millions of documents labeled “mortgages” that were issued in the 2000s … loans with teaser rates, option adjustable rate mortgages, low-doc and no-doc (liar’s) loans, and loans with exaggerated appraisals. Were they mortgages in any normal sense of the word? If a mortgage loan is understood to be a long-term loan that is self-amortizing and backed by real property, they were not. What were they then? Counterfeits is an entirely plausible term. In November 2007 Fitch Ratings issued a report on the matter entitled The Impact of Poor Underwriting Practices and Fraud in Subprime RMBS Performance … following a much larger survey that suggested that fraud played an important part in subprime mortgage defaults: “Base-Point Analytics, LLC, a recognized fraud analytics and consulting firm, analyzed over 3 million loans … Their research found that as much as 70% of early payment default loans contained fraud misrepresentations on the application.” … Yet a peculiar feature of crisis discussions by economists is that the topic of fraud rarely comes up.” University of Texas (Austin) Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs chair in government/business relations James K. Galbraith The End of Normal: The great crisis and the future of growth New York: Simon & Schuster 2014
[22]Vague 2023_pp. 58-59: ‘It’s no coincidence that unrestrained, ill-advised real estate lending preceded the banking crises of 1929[the Great Depression], the late 1980s[the Savings & Loan Debacle], and 2008[the Global Financial Crisis] … In the lead-up to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the US accumulated a gargantuan mountain of new mortgage debt, totalling $5 trillion. This debt was so large it was practically impossible to miss — except that most economists did miss it entirely, and therefore failed to predict the financial crisis. … real estate-related lending was by far the largest component of private sector debt, comprising half of all private debt. With lending of that volume, an adverse trend in the credit quality of real estate loans can disrupt the entire US economy.’ Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Richard Vague The Paradox of Debt: A new path to prosperity without crisis Croydon: Forum 2023
[23]Hudson 2021b_p. 438 Michael Hudson “Rent-seeking and asset-price inflation: A total-returns profile of economic polarization in America”Review of Keynesian Economics v9#4 (October 2021): 435-460;
Lazonick2014 William Lazonick“Profits without prosperity: Stock buybacks manipulate the market and leave most Americans worse off”Harvard Business Review (September 2014): 46-55;
Lazonick& Shin 2020 WilliamLazonickandJang-SupShinPredatory Value Extraction: How the looting of the business corporation became the US norm and how sustainable prosperity can be restored Oxford: Oxford University 2020;
Lazonick 2023: (96% S&P net revenue looted) “In 2012-2021, the 474 corporations included in the S&P 500 Index in January 2022 that were listed throughout the decade funneled $5.7 trillion into the stock market as buybacks, equal to 55% of their combined net income, and paid $4.2 trillion to shareholders as dividends, another 41% of net income.” William Lazonick “The scourge of corporate financialization: Income inequity, employment instability, productive fragility” Institute for New Economic Thinking (21 August 2023)
[24]CNN 17/9/4:““It has the potential to be an epidemic,” said Swecker, who heads the Criminal Division at FBI headquarters in Washington. “We think we can prevent a problem that could have as much impact as the S&L crisis,” he said.”Terry Frieden “FBI warns of mortgage fraud ‘epidemic’”Cable News Network (17 September 2004);
Tillman, Pontell & Black 2020_p. 113n2: “In the aftermath of the financial crisis that began in 2008, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission began sifting through the wreckage of failed institutions and spectacularly bad deals looking for causes.… How, they asked, could the employees at these [non-prime mortgage] firms assemble these products and offer them for sale /knowing/ they were likelyvastly overpriced? The answer… was a common cultural attitude that had an acronym IBGYBG, which stood for “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone.” … In other words: “Take what you want today, get rich, and don’t worry about what happens in the future.”… Economist Robert Kuttner describes IBGYBG as meaning: “Let’s do this deal before the rubes figure out the game, then quickly cash in and get out before it collapses.”” Robert H. Tillman,Henry N.Pontell andWilliam K. Black Financial Crime and Crises in the Era of False Profits Oxford: Oxford University 2020
[25]CBC 17/12/14:“9 Wildrose MLAs, including Danielle Smith, cross to Alberta Tories: Progressive Conservative members say they’re willing to look beyond past grievances”CBC News (17 December 2014);
Caption: Election results in 2015 for the Alberta provincial legislature. Credit: The Canadian Press
Appel 2024_p. 147 (Big Oil’s cont’d rule) Jeremy Appel Kenneyism: Jason Kenney’s pursuit of power Toronto: Dundurn 2024
[26]CSA 2015_pp. 1-2: “This Staff Notice is published in response to numerous inquiries concerning disclosure requirements for abandonment and reclamation costs in National Instrument 51-101 Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities (NI 51-101) and its related forms. Some of these inquiries relate to amendments to NI 51-101 and its related forms that were effective July 1, 2015. Reporting issuers engaged in oil and gas activities are reminded that publicly disclosed estimates of future net revenue must be net of abandonment and reclamation costs.” Canadian Securities Administrators “Disclosure of abandonment and reclamation costs in National Instrument 51-101 Standards of Disclosure for Oil and Gas Activities and Related Forms”CSA Staff Notice #51-345 (5 November 2015): 2pp
[27]DOB 24/11/15: “But the outlook has since worsened. A basket of oil reserves on Oct. 1 of this year is worth about 40 per cent less, on average, than a year ago, based solely on the forward strip for oil prices, Edgelow told the Chartered Professional Accountants Canada oil and gas conference in Calgary on Monday. Oil reserve valuations fell by about 20-25 per cent from the second quarter to the third quarter of this year, he said. Lenders are now being much more specific about what companies need to do, and how quickly. Edgelow cited Spyglass Resources Corp. as an example of where there was a wide gap between the value of the reserves in the spring of 2015 and the valuation under which the producer’s borrowing base had been granted by a group of lenders. … the value of the company’s reserves, based on the forward strip, was now only half of its assigned borrowing base. “So we had $100 million that was conforming and $100 million that was not conforming, and we asked them to have it paid by a set date in March 2016, and we wanted to get a sense of how they were going to do that through different time thresholds,” Edgelow explained. Spyglass’s asset dispositions since the fourth quarter of 2014 totaled $120.1 million. … he said lenders are going approached “almost weekly” by oilfield service companies seeking debt covenant relaxation.”Pat Roche “Dismal oil price outlook throwing borrowing base out of whack”Daily Oil Bulletin (24 November 2015)
[28]CH 27/11/15: “In a filing Nov. 10, Spyglass said it estimates it will incur decommissioning costs of $357 million over time to abandon and reclaim well sites, gathering systems and processing facilities as wells are depleted and retired. Alberta Energy Regulator spokesman Ryan Bartlett said Thursday the question of who inherits liability in the event of insolvency is being discussed now in a Court of Queen’s Bench case involving ATB Financial and Redwater Energy Corp., a small oil and gas producer headquartered in Okotoks that went into receivership in May. … The company agreed to make a series of payments to reduce debt when it renegotiated with its banking syndicate in June. It was placed in receivership when it became clear it would not be able to make a $35-million payment as required by Monday. It said net debt at Sept. 30 was $175 million, made up of $168 million of bank debt and a working capital deficit of $6.4 million.” Dan Healing “Spyglass Resources receivership raises well abandonment liability questions”Calgary Herald (27 November 2015): B4
[29]Boychuk 2023e_p. 30: “I know the flaws of that 2015 review, because I served on its oil sands expert group. Mr. Brunnen knows too; he was the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers’ VP for bitumen at the time. The NDP outsourced its royalty analysis to walking-conflict-of-interest Peter Tertzakian, an executive at Canada’s largest oil and gas investment bank. A fellow conflict of interest—the affable ATB Financial president Dave Mowat—chose Tertzakian. And then Mowat stacked the deck even further. These energy investment bankers weren’t fact-checked by public-servant experts from Alberta Energy but by Blake Shaffer—a U of C grad student and former New York City energy trader. Mowat introduced Shaffer to the expert group as “Blake, the Certifier.” The 2016 royalty report misled the public starting with Fig. 1, which misleadingly included bitumen and didn’t adjust figures for decades of inflation. The numbers lacked proper context: the public’s declining share of total revenue, or our declining revenue per barrel. And it went downhill from there. But a ripoff was inevitable, because no legitimate case can be made for further lowering rock-bottom royalty rates.” Regan Boychuk and former Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers vice president Ben Brunnen “Should Alberta increase oil royalties: A dialogue between Regan Boychuk and Ben Brunnen”Alberta Views v19#10 (December 2023);
Melnyk 1/3/16 (Dave Mowat’s threat) Mandy Melnyk CommenttoCouncil of Canadians meeting hosting Regan Boychuk to talk about royalties and oilfield cleanup (Calgary: 16th Ave NW Unitarian Church 1 March 2016)
[30]Boychuk2016a Regan Boychuk “Royalty decision compounds past mistakes”Edmonton Journal (7 February 2016): A7;
Boychuk2016b Regan Boychuk “Alberta NDP’s royalty review was scandalous, and they just made it worse”National Observer (13 July 2016)
[31]OCI 2023_p. 2: “Using updated 2023 data, the proportion of coal, oil, and gas reserves that must remain unextracted to meet the 1.5°C limit has increased from nearly 40% in 2018 to almost 60% in 2023.”Kelly Trout “Sky’s the Limit data update: Shut down 60% of existing fossil fuel extraction to keep 1.5°C in reach”Oil Change International Briefing (16 August 2023): 6pp;
OCI 2022Kelly Trout, Greg Muttitt, Dimitri Lafleur, Thijs Van de Graaf, Roman Mendelevitch, Lan Mei and Malte Meinshausen “Existing fossil fuel extraction would warm the world beyond 1.5°C”Environmental Research Letters v17#6 (June 2022) #064010: 12pp
[32]Keen2022_pp. 141-42 (must acknowledge finance sector’s role), 147-49: “Today, system dynamics is commonplace in engineering and management, but it has never developed a strong following in economics. This is not despite the fact that it was first developed in response to shortcomings in economic modelling, but because of it. System dynamics was perceived as a fundamental challenge to the equilibrium-obsessed methodology of Neoclassical economics, and its challenge was effectively repulsed. The attack … was led by none other than William Nordhaus (Nordhaus 1973). You should appreciate the irony, given how Nordhaus has used obvious fallacies to make up his own numbers on climate change, that his main critique of [pioneering computer engineer and system dynamics developer Jay] Forrester’s work was its poor attention to data. Forrester’s rebuttal of Nordhaus was in summary that “each point made by Nordhaus rests on a misunderstanding of World Dynamics, a misuse of empirical data, or an inability to analyze properly the dynamic behavior of the model by static equilibrium methods.” (Forrester et al. 1974, p. 169; Bardi 2018). Forrester was right and Nordhaus was wrong, but the damage was done. … the technology itself was ridiculed out of contention in economics. Consequently, while system dynamics technology has progressed enormously in engineering, outside the work of enthusiasts … its application in even non-Neoclassical economics is almost non-existent. Minsky is intended to address the deficiencies of existing programs for economic modelling, and to overcome their interface shortcomings as well. … the unique feature of “Godley Tables” … make it far easier to model financial flows.” Steve Keen The New Economics: A manifesto Medford: Polity 2022;
Nordhaus 1973William D. Nordhaus “World Dynamics: Measurement without data” London Royal Economic Society Economic Journal v83#332 (December 1973): 1156-83;
Forrester, Low & Mass 1974_p. 190: “Nordhaus appears to have misread both World Dynamics and Malthus. The issues surrounding the possibilities of growth in a finite world are subtle, important, and deeply interrelated. The insights given us by Malthus are remarkably clear and penetrating as we evaluate them nearly 200 years later in the light of computer simulation of the interactions that he drew from direct observation of real life.” Jay W. Forrester, Gilbert W. Low and Nathaniel J. Mass “The debate on World Dynamics: A response to Nordhaus”Policy Sciences v5#2 (June 1974): 169-90;
Malthus 1798Thomas Robert Malthus An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society: With remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet and other writers London: J. Johnson 1798;
Keen 2021b Steve Keen Modelling with Minsky (October 2021): 195pp;
Keen2020_p. 62: “Minsky and system dynamics … provide the foundations for a paradigmatic challenge to Neoclassical economics, whose development has been driven by the obsession with finding sound micro-foundations for macroeconomics, all the while ignoring results that showed this was impossible (Gorman 1953; Anderson 1972; Sonnenschein 1972, 1973). Macro-foundations, far-from equilibrium complex systems dynamics, and monetary analysis — the polar opposites of the Neoclassical obsessions with micro-foundations, equilibrium and barter — are the proper bases for economic theory.” Steve Keen “Emergent macroeconomics: Deriving Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis directly from macroeconomic definitions”Review of Political Economy v32#3 (2020): 342-70
[33]Ferri & Minsky 1991_pp. 12: “thwarting systems are analogous to homeostatic mechanisms which may prevent a system from exploding”, 16: “serious bankers will not finance industries that require expensive capital assets unless there is some believable guarantee that price will not fall to marginal cost”, 24: “endogenous instability view of the economy literally stands Lucas on his head: Apt intervention & institutional structures are necessary for market economies to be successful”Piero Ferri and Hyman P. Minsky “Market processes and thwarting systems” Bard College Levy Economics Institute Working Paper #64 (November 1991): 31pp
[34]Cohn, Fehr & Maréchal 2014_p. 88 Alain Cohn, Ernst Fehr and Michel André Maréchal “Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry”Nature v516#7529 (19 November 2014): 86-89
[35]Gasparini, Ives, Carr, Fry & Beinhocker 2024: “a largely neglected question in this literature and among policymakers is whether existing financial regulations could be negatively contributing to the net-zero carbon transition … Our empirical analysis allows us to observe that model-based estimates of risk are lower for high-carbon sectors compared with low-carbon ones. … active divestment from high-carbon assets could be costly for banks. We argue that this, in turn, could create perverse incentives impairing the shift of financial resources from high-carbon to low-carbon assets … The decision to divest from high-carbon assets could lead to more than doubling of provisions for some banks in our sample and could thus have material impacts on the bank’s stock market valuations. … could weigh substantially on banks’ net profits. … We estimate that for some banks, the transition could cost as much as 5 years of profits over the divestment horizon and, on an outstanding loan weighted average basis, 15% of the previous 5 years of profits … This phenomenon might arguably limit investments in green assets if their past risk estimates have been relatively high.” Matteo Gasparini, Matthew C. Ives, Ben Carr, Sophie Fry and Eric Beinhocker “Model-based financial regulations impair the transition to net-zero carbon emissions”Nature Climate Change (2 April 2024): 8pp + “Supplemental Notes #1-5”: 15pp
[36]Vague 2019_pp. 6-8 (italics in original): ‘Time and again, a financial crisis emerges directly not just from ambition but also from this capacity for self-delusion and deceit, intended or unintended, official or unofficial. Time and again, lending is the platform for that delusion. This intense ambition is impossible to overestimate and crucial to understanding business and economics in general, not just booms and crises. … financial crises recur so frequently … that we have to wonder whylending booms happen at all. The answer is this: growth in lending is what brings lenders higher compensation, advancement, and recognition. Until a crisis point is reached, rapid lending growth can bring euphoria and staggering wealth … Lending booms are driven by competition, inevitably accompanied by the fear of falling behind or missing out … Having spent a lifetime in the industry, I can report that there is almost always the desire to grow loans aggressively and increase wealth … So the better and more profound question is, why are there periods in which loan growth isn’t booming? … when lenders are chastened — often in the years following a crisis.’ Secretary of Banking and Securities for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Richard Vague A Brief History of Doom: Two hundred years of financial crises Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 2019
[37]Sutherland 1949_ch. 1429th president of American Sociological Society Edwin H. Sutherland White Collar Crime: The uncut version (1949; New Haven: Yale University 1983)
[38]Dewey 1931: “We have long been told that politics is unimportant, that government is merely a drag and an interference; thatthe captains of industry and finance are the wise ones, the leaders in whose hands the fortunes of the country are safely entrusted. The persons who keep reiterating such sayings forget, they try to conceal from view, that the confusion, the perplexity, the triviality, the irrelevance, of politics at Washington merely reflect the bankruptcy of industrial “leadership”, just as politics in general is an echo, except when it is an accomplice, of the interests of big business. The deadlocks and the impotence of Congress are definitively the mirror of the demonstrated incapacity of the captains of industry and finance to conduct the affairs of the country prosperously as an incident of the process of feathering their own nests. It would be ludicrous, were it not tragic, to believe that an appeal to the unregulated activities of those who have got us into the present crisis will get us out of it, provided they are relived from the incubus of political action. The magic of eating a hair of the dog which bit you in order to cure hydrophobia is as nothing to the magic involved in the belief that those who have privilege and power will remedy the breakdown they have created. As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance. The only remedy is new political action based on social interests and realities.” John Dewey“The breakdown of the old order”New Republic v66 (25 March 1931): 115-16 inJohn Dewey: The Later Works, 1925-1953 v6:1931-1932 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University 2006): 161-64
[39]Tolstoy 1869_bk14, ch2:“Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its mass and some unknown x.Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it—now in a geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which accord with the historic facts.Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to gratify the “heroes”) of the efficacy of the directions issued in wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two or three-line formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most advantageous conditions for fighting.The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of this unknown factor—the spirit of an army—is a problem for science.This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that force becomes apparent—such as the commands of the general, the equipment employed, and so on—mistaking these for the real significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor, can we hope to define the unknown.Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions, or divisions, conquer—that is, kill or take captive—all the others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws should exist and might be discovered.” Leo Tolstoy (trans.) Louise and Aylmer Maude War and Peace (1865-69) Project Gutenberg
[40]Stacey 1954b_p. 3Army Headquarters historical section director Colonel Charles Percy Stacey “The Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence, 1940-1945”Report #70 {CONFIDENTIAL} (24 June 1954; declassified 13 November 1986): 40pp
[41]Granatstein 1974_pp. 8, 4: Ogdensburg “marked the shift of Canada from a British Dominion to Canada as an American protectorate … Some people realized this at the time, but … only the very foolish felt obliged to say so in public. … For the ordinary-sized, relations with giants must always be careful”Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century Chair (2001-4) Jack L. Granatstein “Getting on with the Americans: Changing Canadian perceptions of the United States, 1939-1945”Canadian Review of American Studies v5#1 (March 1974): 3-17;
Granatstein 1967Jack L. Granatstein “The Conservative Party and the Ogdensburg Agreement”International Journal v22#1 (March 1967): 73-76
[42]Tellingly,US legislation banning foreign interference was not passed until 1938 and has recently been rescinded.CRS 2025“Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA): An overview” Congressional Research Service In Focus (5 January 2025): 2pp;
IOOF Sovereign Grand LodgeHistory: Prince of Wales George Augustus Frederick, later King George IV (r. 1820-30), admitted to the Order of Oddfellows around 1780;
Odd Fellowship 1897_p. 426: “The bill, however, passed, but was disallowed by the British Government.” Past Grand Sire Cl. T. Campbell“British North America”in Henry Leonard Stillson (ed.) The Official History of the Odd Fellowship: The three-link fraternity: The antiquities, creative period, and golden age of friendship, love, and truth revised edn. (1897; Boston: Fraternity 1898): 419-75
[43]Sowle 1967_p. 235: “Seward, his old friend Thurlow Weed of the Albany Evening Journal, and Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, planned to publish the memorandum together with Lincoln’s reply, which they anticipated would endorse the Secretary’s proposals. Weed and Raymond would launch a newspaper campaign to support the new policy advocated by Seward and now endorsed by Lincoln. They hoped to create the necessary public support for Lincoln to abandon Fort Sumter and to adopt Seward’s plans for cultivating Southern Union sentiment as the first step toward peaceful reunification.” Patrick Sowle “A reappraisal of Seward’s memorandum of April 1, 1861, to Lincoln”Journal of Southern History v33#2 (May 1967): 234-39
[44]Laurier 15/5/17: “Toryism has obtained an enormous influence in Ontario. In fact, Ontario is no longer Ontario: it is again the old small province of Upper Canada, and again governed from London. There is only one difference and the difference is only in the name. Upper Canada was governed from Downing Street with the instrumentality of the Family Compact sitting at York, now Toronto. Canada is now governed by a junta sitting at London, known as “The Round Table” with ramifications in Toronto, in Winnipeg, in Victoria, with Tories and Grits receiving their ideas from London, and insidiously forcing them on their respective parties. As to the Tories, I am not surprised, they are in their element, true to the instincts of their nature, to the traditions of their ancestors, but for the Grits, oh! for the old spirit of sturdy Liberalism which still prevailed in my youth! Truly, I have lived too long.” Letter from former prime minister Sir Henri Charles Wilfred Laurierto Sir Allen Aylesworth (15 May 1917) in Oscar Douglas Skelton Life and Letters of Sir Wilfred Laurier (New York: Century 1922)v2: 510
[45] Immerwahr 2019_p. 7: “At the turn of the twentieth century, when many were acquired (Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, Hawai’i, Wake), their status was clear. They were, as Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson unabashedly called them, colonies. Yet that spirit of forthright imperialism didn’t last. Within a decade or two, after passions had cooled, the c-word became taboo. “The word colony must not be used to express the relationship which exists between our government and its dependent peoples,” an official admonished in 1914.” Daniel Immerwahr How to Hide an Empire: A history of the greater United States (2019; New York: Picador 2020);
Miller & Dinan 2007_p. 11: “PR pioneer Ivy Lee … believed in the necessity of “courtiers” to “flatter and caress” the crowd. The courtiers were the PR professionals, like himself.” David Miller and William Dinan “Public relations and the subversion of democracy”ch1 in William Dinan and David Miller (eds.) Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy: Corporate PR and the assault on democracy (London: Pluto 2007): 11-20;
Keshen 2003: “Like his brother Edward Thomas Davies, [Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest John Chambers] became a journalist. As a field correspondent for the Montreal Daily Star, he traveled west in 1885 to cover Major-General Frederick Dobson Middleton’s drive to suppress the Métis uprising. He was a volunteer galloper at the battles of Fish Creek and Batoche (Sask.), and contributed to the operations against Big Bear [Mistahimaskwa], for which efforts he was decorated. In 1888-89 he was managing editor and publisher of the Calgary Herald.” Jeffrey A. Keshen “Chambers, Ernest John”Dictionary of Canadian Biography:1921-1930 v15 (2003);
Keshen 1996_p. 65: “made retroactive until 4 August, [Canada’s War Measures Act] … provided for “censorship and control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communication and means of communication.” … contrary to traditional Common Law practice, once charged, the onus of proof lay with the accused to demonstrate innocence.” Jeffrey A. Keshen Propaganda and Censorship During Canada’s Great War (PhD supervisor: J.L. Granatstein) Edmonton: University of Alberta 1996
[46]Schumacher 1993_p. 7: “For the first time, the extra-parliamentary wing of a national party played a pivotal role in the selection of a leader.” Stan Schumacher in MLA Paul MacEwan, MLA Stan Schumacher, MLA Tony Whitford, MLA Gary Farrell-Collins, MHA Len Sims and MLA Doreen Hamilton “Reforming the leadership convention process: A roundtable discussion”Canadian Parliamentary Review v16#3 (Autumn 1993): 7-9
[47]Kaufeld 2024: “Following pressure from [United Farmers of Alberta and its members of provincial legislature] and supporters, including Henry Wise Wood, [John] Brownlee accepted the leadership position and became Premier” Stacey F. Kaufeld “Born unequal: Alberta and the Natural Resources Transfer Agreement” (26 February 2024) Legal Archives Society of Alberta (21 March 2024) [speech to Calgary Association of Lifelong Learners];
Foster 2008: “a well-mannered backstairs revolt” Franklin L. Foster “John Edward Brownlee”Canadian Encyclopedia (2008; 4 March 2015);
Foster 2004_p. 83: “some stalwart UFA MLAs broached the idea of a leadership change to Brownlee. He rejected any possibility of disloyalty, so Henry Wise Wood was recruited to again urge the premiership on Brownlee. … only when [Premier] Greenfield himself declared he would bare no grudge did Brownlee accept.” Franklin L. Foster “John Edward Brownlee, 1925-34”in Bradford J. Rennie (ed.) Alberta Premiers of the Twentieth Century (Regina: University of Regina 2004): 77-106;
Schumacher 1993_p. 7: Another new-style leadership convention, October 1927:“the Conservative Party held a national delegate convention to elect Richard Bedford Bennett as leader. Since then, national conventions have been used to select national party leaders” Stan Schumacher in MLA Paul MacEwan, MLA Stan Schumacher, MLA Tony Whitford, MLA Gary Farrell-Collins, MHA Len Sims and MLA Doreen Hamilton “Reforming the leadership convention process: A roundtable discussion”Canadian Parliamentary Review v16#3 (Autumn 1993): 7-9
[48]Upton Sinclair self-published his study of bad faith, yellow journalism in the United States and later remarked on the nefarious role of oiligarch foundations in his study of education. Sinclair 1919_p. 436: “What is the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelope every week—you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the market-place, who betray the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business. And down in the counting-room below sits the “madame” who profits by your shame; unless, perchance, she is off at Palm Beach or Newport, flaunting her jewels and her feathers. Please do not think that I am just slinging ugly words. Off and on for years I have thought about this book, and figured over the title, and what it means ; I assert that the Brass Check which serves in the house of ill-fame as “the price of a woman’s shame” is, both in its moral implications and in its social effect, precisely and identically the same as the gold and silver coins and pieces of written paper that are found every week in the pay-envelopes of those who write and print and distribute capitalist publications.” Upton Sinclair The Brass Check: A study of American journalism Pasadena: [self-published] 1919;
Myers 1908_pp. 199-200: “Rockefeller, ruminating in his small refinery at Cleveland, Ohio, had conceived the revolutionary idea of getting a monopoly of the production and distribution of oil, obliterating the middleman, and systematizing and centralizing the whole business. Then and there was the modern trust born; and from the very inception of the Standard Oil Company Rockefeller and his associates tenaciously pursued their design with a combined ability and unscrupulousness such as had never before been known since the rise of capitalism. One railroad after another was persuaded or forced into granting them secret rates and rebates against which it was impossible to compete. The railroad magnates — William H. Vanderbilt, for instance — were taken in the fold of the Standard Oil Company by being made stockholders. With these secret rates the Standard Oil Company was enabled to crush out absolutely a myriad of competitors and middlemen, and control the petroleum trade not only of the United States but of almost the entire world. Such fabulous profits accumulated that in the course of forty years, after one unending career of industrial construction on the one hand, and crime on the other, the Standard Oil Company was easily able to become owners of prodigious railroad and other systems, and completely supplant the scions of the magnates whom three or four decades before they had wheedled or browbeaten into favoring them with discriminations.” Gustavus Myers Great Fortunes from Railroadsv2 of The History of the Great American Fortunes Chicago: Charles H. Kerr 1908;
Sinclair 1923_p. 409: A “great benefactor of our educational system was Mr. John D. Rockefeller, who has given one or two hundred millions of dollars to a foundation for the purpose of improving our schools and colleges according to Standard Oil ideals. The General Education Board has millions to give to those educational institutions which conform, and it holds over the head of every college and university president a perpetual bribe to sell out the interests of the people.” Upton Sinclair The Goose-Step: A study in American educationPasadena: [self-published] 1923;
Brode 2010_pp. 164, 172-73: “Vivian’s story was completely uncorroborated by any supporting evidence. … Brownlee’s defence, on the other hand, was supported by many witnesses and moreover “… no one … over a period of three years … in any way gave them ground for a suspicious thought. It may be possible, but is it probable?” … based upon the plaintiff’s evidence, the case was not proven. Much of her evidence was contradictory, disproved by other facts, or unsupported by any corroborative evidence. … In other provincial histories, details of the scandal are inaccurately reported, or it is presumed without question that Brownlee was guilty. His death was not widely noted in Alberta” Patrick Brode“MacMillan v. Brownlee”ch10 in Courted and Abandoned: Seduction in Canadian law (Toronto: Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History 2010): 149-73, 235-37;
Savage-Hughes & Taras 1992_p. 200: “The Calgary Herald and the Edmonton Journal were also instrumental in the [1935] demise of the [United Farmers of Alberta] government. … The ferocity of their opposition became evident in extensive coverage, often 4 pages a day, given to a [fake] sexual misconduct suit … The controversies that resulted from this sensational [yellow] reporting did irreparable damage to the UFA, which was subsequently defeated in 1935.” Denise Savage-Hughes and University of Calgary Ernest C. Manning Chair in Canadian Studies David Taras“The mass media and modern Alberta politics”in Allan Tupper and Roger Gibbons (eds.) Government and Politics in Alberta (Edmonton: University of Alberta 1992): 197-217
[49]CP 3/5/38: “first ever … Pulitzer awards … ever made outside the realm of the United States press … The proceedings were carried throughout Canada and the United States over National radio hookups. … presenting [was dean of Columbia Journalism School Carl Akerman] … The presiding justice of the [Canadian] Supreme Court … said “The freedom of the press is essential to public opinion and public discussion, which in turn are necessary to parliamentary government.”” Canadian Press “Alberta papers lauded in fight for free press: Edmonton Journal awarded Pulitzer plaque: ‘Dictatorship’”Calgary Herald (3 May 1938): 8
[50]Breen 1993pp. 145-47 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993;
GoA 1938pp. 13-14 (sections 44 + 46) Government of Alberta An Act for the Conservation of the Oil and Gas Resources of the Province of Alberta 2nd session of 8th Legislature (agreed 20 November 1938; assented 22 November 1938): 18pp;
Brennan 2008_p. 111: “Manning … government … developed regulatory policy in conjunction with the American companies operating in the Alberta oil patch.” Brian Brennan The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning story Calgary: Fifth House 2008
[51]Breen 1993_pp. 139-40 David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993;
CP 11/10/38 Canadian Press “Two to probe oil industry: Alberta names commission to investigate costs and prices” Globe and Mail (12 October 1938): 7;
Knafla & Klumpenhouwer 1997a: “McGillivray … studied the subject so thoroughly that in the end he was able to understand and describe the intricacies of petroleum engineering.” Louis Knafla and Richard Klumpenhouwer “McGillivray, Alexander Andrew”in Lords of the Western Bench: A biographical history of the supreme and district courts of Alberta, 1876-1990 (Calgary: Legal Archives Society of Alberta 1997): 120-21;
McGillivray & Lipsett 1940Alberta Supreme Court Chief Justice Alexander A. McGillivray and Major L.R. Lipsett Alberta’s Oil Industry: The report of a Royal Commission appointed by the Government of the Province of Alberta under the Public Inquiries Act to inquire into matters connected with petroleum and petroleum products Calgary: Imperial Oil 1940;
CH 14/6/40 “Gasoline price fixing opposed: Report finds consumer goods safeguarded: Gov’t should not compete with ‘own people’ in oil industry”Calgary Herald (14 June 1940): 1-3, 11;
CH 12/12/40“Death of Mr. Justice McGillivray seen as great loss to province: Tribute paid to brilliant jurist”Calgary Herald (12 December 1940): 11;
CH 13/12/40“Reserve oil fields essential to Alberta: Oilmen hear five-point plan”Calgary Herald (13 December 1940): 23
[52]G&M 19/8/38pp. 1-3 +NYT 19/8/38pp. 1-3 (yellow coverage of `38 honourary degree, see bibliography to Appendix C);
Stacey 1954_pp. 112-13: “the two statesmen issued to the press the now celebrated statement announcing the formation of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. Mr. Roosevelt had been accompanied by Mr. Stimson, the Secretary of War, who took part in the conversations. … No paper was signed, and the [110-word] release remained the basis of the new board. Canada published its text in her Treaty Series and included it in an order in council. The United States regarded it as an executive agreement not subject to ratification by the Senate, and it was never submitted to that body. No international arrangement of comparable importance has ever been concluded more informally. Mr. King appears to have had no opportunity of consulting his ministerial colleagues before his interview with the President, and it seems likely that he did not know in advance precisely what proposal Roosevelt intended to lay before him.” Colonel C.P. Stacey “The Canadian-American Permanent Joint Board of Defence, 1940-1945”International Journal v9#2 (Spring 1954): 107-24;
Canada 1940“Declaration by the Prime Minister of Canada and the President of the United States of America Regarding the Establishing of a Permanent Joint Board of Defence” Canada Treaty Series 1940 #14 (18 August 1940): 1p;
Canada 1947“Joint Statement by the Governments of Canada and of the United States of America Regarding Defence Co-operation Between the Two Countries”Canada Treaty Series 1947 #16 (12 February 1947) [only available online without including date signed separately at Washington and Ottawa]
[53]Brebner 1940_p. 20 (Trotsky’s last interview) John Bartlett Brebner “Ogdensburg: A turn in Canadian-American relations”Inter-American Quarterly v2#4 (October 1940): 18-28;
Pollock 1981_p. 219: “Like a magician working with mirrors, Roosevelt hid the reality of his aims with a series of plausible actions. Those who argue that historians can deduce motives from the public statements of leaders are not proven wrong—the president consistently brought up the issue of the disposition of the British fleet. But with Franklin Roosevelt, who so carefully kept his own counsel, actions must guide us to the words that count.” Fred E. Pollock “Roosevelt, the Ogdensburg Agreement, and the British fleet: All done with mirrors”Diplomatic History v5#3 (July 1981): 203-19
[54]Soto-Pérez-de-Celis 2010Enrique Soto-Pérez-de-Celis “The death of Leon Trotsky”Neurosurgery v67#2 (August 2010): 417-23
[55]Deutsch 1963_pp. 2-3: “One could go down a long list of political assassinations throughout the world during the past century, and find that almost without exception the identity of the extroverted killer was not a matter of the slightest doubt. … In modern history, however, one political assassination is still being hotly debated, not merely as to the motives which prompted the deed, but as to the identity of the one whose bullet inflicted the fatal wound. This was the killing of Huey P. Long, self-proclaimed “Kingfish” of Louisiana, who was on the very threshold of a bold attempt to extend his dominion to the limits of the United States via the White House” Hermann B. Deutsch The Huey Long Murder CaseGarden City: Doubleday 1963
[56]Ronald 2023_pp. 355, 358-65: “Although the British had made the significance of Popov’s mission abundantly clear and sent ahead a report … nothing had been forwarded to [J. Edgar] Hoover. An angry and sullen Popov was summoned to meet Hoover at Rockefeller Center a few days later.”; ““I can catch spies without your or anybody else’s help,” FBI’s Hoover fulminated … “good riddance.”” Susan Ronald Hitler’s Aristocrats: The secret power players in Britain and America who supported the Nazis, 1923–1941New York: St. Martin’s 2023 [excerpt]
[57]Breen 1993_p. 280: “In March, after discussions with the industry, the government accepted to the request to set a royalty ceiling that it was bound not to exceed [16.7%].” David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993
[58]Boychuk 2023c: (Cumulative royalties value of cumulative production: 1947-2018)Regan Boychuk “On May 29th, Alberta can slip its American noose”pt4 of “Alberta’s Rockefeller coups” York University Capital-as-Power blog (23 May 2023) citing Tables 4.3b + 4.19b inCAPP 2020 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers “Statistical handbook for Canada’s upstream petroleum industry”Technical Report #2019-9999 (February 2020): 204pp
[59]Bratt & Foster 2020_pp. 22-23: “It was remarkable that the secret negotiations never got out into the public domain. There was not a single media reference. … even when the document’s details were provided to the Social Credit caucus and to the senior leadership of the PCs, they were never leaked; neither at the time nor for decades hence.” Duane Bratt and Bruce Foster “The attempted takeover of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta”Alberta History v68#2 (Spring 2020): 20-26;
Manning 2017 Preston Manning “This isn’t the first time Albertans have grappled with uniting the right”Calgary Herald (3 February 2017): A11
[60]AEAP 1996_p. 12: John Nichol joins the Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board in 1970 “in various regulatory functions involving oil and gas drilling and production.” Alberta Environmental Appeal Board Sarg Oils Ltd. and Sergius Mankow v. Director of Land Reclamation Alberta Environmental ProtectionHearing for Appeal #94-011 (5-6 November 1996) Report and Recommendations (5 December 1996): 25pp
[61]NYT 13/6/71: “Three pages of documentary material from the Pentagon study begin on Page 35.” Neil Sheehan “Vietnam archive: Pentagon study traces 3 decades of growing US involvement”New York Times (13 June 1971): 1, 35-38;
Risen 2023: James Risen “The secret history: How Neil Sheehan really got the Pentagon Papers”Intercept (7 October 2023)
[62] Kornbluh 2003_pp. 9-10, 18 + ch1 docs #4-6: Former CIA director Frank McCone “offered $1 million “for the purpose of assisting any [US] government plan … to stop Allende.”” Peter Kornbluh The Pinochet File: A declassified dossier on atrocity and accountability New York: New Press 2003;
National Security Archive 2023doc 2.1: National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger to Secretary of State William Rogers: “we want to be sure the paper record doesn’t look bad. No matter what we do it will probably end up dismal. So our paper work should be done carefully.” Peter Kornbluh, William Burr and Tom Blanton (eds.) “Kissinger and Chile”pt2 of “Henry Kissinger: The declassified obituary: The primary sources on Kissinger’s controversial legacy” George Washington University National Security Archive Briefing Book #848 (29 November 2023): 9 docs
[64]NYT12/12/73: “The Governor has also set up a virtual second state government consisting of semi‐autonomous agencies, such as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Urban Development Corporation, the Housing Finance Agency and the State University Construction Fund. These agencies borrowed and spent billions of dollars with little or no legislative supervision, often without voter approval. “The greatest system ever invented,” the Governor has said. The agencies’ debt is $66.7‐billion—double the regular state debt” “Rockefeller’s 15 years as governor reflect achievement, growth and controversy”New York Times (12 December 1973): 53
[65]Long 1935_pp. 12787, 12789-90: Senator Long reading a transcript into the Congressional Record: “Here is Oscar Whilden, who is the head of the Square Deal League, who is apparently presiding:WHILDEN. “I am out to murder, kill, bulldoze, steal, or anything else to win this election.”I wonder if the President’s representatives dissented to this? … Voice. “I would draw in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would only take 1 man, 1 gun, and 1 bullet.” … They never were able to identify who this was— … Voice. “I haven’t the slightest doubt but that Roosevelt would pardon anyone who killed Long”” Louisiana Governor (1928-32) and US Senator (1932-35) Huey Pierce Long Jr. “The plan of robbery, murder, blackmail, or theft”Congressional Record: Senate v79pt12(9 August 1935): 12786-91
[66]Valkoun 2020(22/11/26 imperial veto) Jaroslav Valkoun “William Lyon Mackenzie King and the question of the institutional status of governors-general at the Imperial Conference, 1926”West Bohemian Historical Review v2020#2 (2020): 189-99;
Pilger 2020: “There is historical amnesia among Australia’s polite society about the catastrophic events of 1975. An Anglo-American coup overthrew a democratically elected ally in a demeaning scandal in which sections of the Australian elite colluded. This is largely unmentionable.” John Pilger “The forgotten coup against ‘the most loyal ally’”Independent Australia (5 June 2020);
Hocking 2020:“the Palace letters have shattered claims of royal neutrality and non-involvement, revealing the intensely political nature of the correspondence – none more so than on the existence and use of reserve powers … lingering colonial entanglements of the imperial aftermath mean the circumstances allowing the 1975 coup remain unchanged today” Jenny Hocking “’For the sake of the monarchy’”ch12 ofThe Palace Papers: The Queen, the governor-general, and the plot to dismiss Gough Whitlam (Melbourne: Scribe 2020): 221-31
[67]Brennan 2008_p. 156: The Mannings “initiated a series of top-secret talks aimed at uniting the aging Social Credit party with the revitalized [Alberta Progressive] Conservatives. … [PC leader Peter] Lougheed found it strange that a party holding sixty of the sixty-three seats in the legislature would approach a party that then had no seats. But he gave the project his guarded approval anyhow. So did Premier Manning. The “gang of four,” as Preston dubbed them, were Preston and a sociology graduate student named Erick Schmidt representing the Socreds, and future prime minister Joe Clark (then one of Lougheed’s executive assistants) and future provincial energy minister Merv Leitch representing the Conservatives. … When the draft plan was presented, however, neither side wanted to adopt it.” Brian Brennan The Good Steward: The Ernest C. Manning story Calgary: Fifth House 2008;
UPI 26/1/83: “Hundreds of delegates to the Conservative convention fumed Wednesday while they queued up for about two hours to register for the meeting that will decide Joe Clark’s leadership. … It was the first time organizers had used computers in the hopes of avoiding the long delays experienced in the past.” “Hundreds of delegates to the Conservative convention fumed Wednesday…” United Press International (26 January 1983);
Paikin 2013: “the old Progressive Conservative Party tossed out as leader a former prime minister, in favour of a man who’d never been elected to anything. Strange but true. In fact, that the leadership convention happened at all was bizarre. … Fully 66.9 per cent of delegates endorsed Clark’s leadership, and yet inexplicably, the leader thought that level of support wasn’t good enough. He resigned, called for another leadership convention to put the issue of who should lead the party to rest once and for all.” Steve Paikin “The leadership convention that changed history”TVOntario Today (4 June 2013);
Ascah 1999_p. xii: “During the period from 1982 to May 1998, credit rating agencies (Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, Canadian Bond Rating Service, and Dominion Bond Rating Service) downgraded the provinces’ ratings 65 times with upgrades occurring 14 times. From 1993 to 1998, the Government of Canada had been downgraded at least once by major agencies and twice in the case of Moody’s. … Clearly the government policy-makers are coming under increasing pressure from the media and financial community to do something about rising public debt.” Robert L. Ascah Politics and Public Debt: The Dominion, the banks and Alberta’s Social Credit Edmonton: University of Alberta 1999
[68]McQuaig 2024: Feb`83 was “The first real glimpse Canadians got of Brian Mulroney … he was the front-runner in the Progressive Conservative party’s leadership race. He was also the president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, and his assignment from the company’s US bosses was to shut down the company’s mining operations in Schefferville, Quebec, turning the once-thriving remote northern community into a ghost town. With the national media camped out in Schefferville to see Mulroney perform, the aspiring prime minister announced generous severance packages for the hundreds of terminated employees, turning the potential disaster into a political triumph.” Linda McQuaig “Brian Mulroney delivered for corporate bosses, leaving workers in the snowbanks: Mulroney transformed the political and economic landscape, partly through his free trade deal with the US that weakened labour”Toronto Star (21 March 2024);
CPAC 1983: “Brian Mulroney ran for the second time, taking aim at Clark and Crosbie before the convention and highlighting the party’s weakness among francophone and immigrant voters. But he had never held elected office. Mulroney promised to include all opponents on his team after winning. He also pledged more private-sector growth and foreign investment but expressed skepticism of free trade.” “1983 Progressive Conservative leadership” Cable Public Affairs Channel (11 June 1983);
Nelson 1989_p. 146: ‘the Prime Minister of Canada received special recognition from the International Chamber of Commerce for his “environmental achievements”. Casting back over the Mulroney years, it is difficult to think of what the ICC had in mind unless it was Mulroney’s supreme efforts to create that necessary “favourable business environment” through the free trade deal. Most recently, the Mulroney government had budgeted $5.1 billion in 1989 for loans and grants to extract fossil fuel resources in Canada over a period of five years, while budgeting only $160 million for alternative energy sources for the same period.’ Joyce Nelson Sultans of Sleaze: Public relations and the media Montréal: Between the Lines 1989;
CBC 31/10/7 Linden MacIntyre “Mulroney tried to cover up cash payments he received in hotel rooms: Former prime minister Brian Mulroney attempted to cover up cash payments of $300,000 he received from a secret account, Karlheinz Schreiber told CBC’s The Fifth Estate”CBC News (31 October 2007)
[69]Thompson 2024: OSFI claims to be “an independent federal government agency dedicated to fostering public confidence in the Canadian financial system.” Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions National Security Sector Assistant Superintendent Kathy Thompson “Keynote speech”Anti-money Laundering and Financial Crime Annual Canadian Forum(5 June 2024)
[70]Lavoie 2019_pp. 2-3 Marc Lavoie “A system with zero reserves and with clearing outside of the central bank: The Canadian case”Review of Political Economy v31#2 (2019): 145-58
[71]ASC 2001 Alberta Securities CommissionOil & Gas Securities Taskforce Report (24 January 2001): 32pp;
DOB 24/1/1Elsie Ross “CAPP calls for deferral of changes to orphan fund”Daily Oil Bulletin (24 January 2001);
Harper, Flanagan, Morton, Knopff, Crooks & Boessenkool 2001 National Citizens’ Coalition President Stephen Harper, professor of political science and former Reform Party of Canada director of research Tom Flanagan, professor of political science and Alberta Senator-elect Ted Morton, professor of political science Rainer Knopff, Canadian Taxpayers Federation Chairman Andrew Crooks, former policy adviser to Alberta Treasurer (Stockwell Day) Ken Boessenkool “An open letter to Ralph Klein: Re: The Alberta agenda”National Post (24 January 2001): A14
[72]NP 10/9/2 Paul Haavardsrud “ASC task force chairman resigns”National Post (10 September 2002): FP1ff
[73]Brezina&Gilmour2003_pp. 32, 39: “Section 20.1 was repealed with the amendments, so under the amended OGCA there does not appear to be any direct risk of liability to directors, officers or controlling shareholders for the abandonment liabilities of the corporation. … Under the amended OGCA, directors and officers have no direct personal liability for suspension or abandonment costs” Danielle Brezina and Bradley Gilmour “Protecting and supporting the Orphan Fund: Recent legislative changes and AEUB policy amendments designed to address unfunded liabilities of oil and gas facilities in Alberta”Alberta Law Review v41#1 (July 2003): 29-47;
DOB 19/8/3“Alberta environment revising reclamation certificate procedures” Daily Oil Bulletin (19 August 2003)
[74]All mathematical proofs balance both sides of the equation. The fundamental accounting equation, also called the balance sheet equation, requires that Assets minus Liabilities minus Equity must equal Zero. Without central clearing of all transactions through the central bank, there is no way to know when or whether the national sheet balances, or whether we are being drained of untold trillions like a colony. FASB 2010_pp. 3, 13-14 (paras. OB12, BC1.33): “General purpose financial reports provide information about the financial position of a reporting entity, which is information about the entity’s economic resources and the claims against the reporting entity. … In discussing the financial position of an entity, the Exposure Draft referred to economic resources and claims on them. The chapter uses the phrase economic resources of the reporting entity and the claims against the reporting entity (see paragraph OB12). The reason for the change is that, in many cases, claims against an entity are not claims on specific resources. In addition, many claims will be satisfied using resources that will result from future net cash inflows. Thus, while all claims are claims against the entity, not all are claims against the entity’s existing resources.” Financial Accounting Standards Board of the Financial Accounting Foundation “The objective of general purpose financial reporting”ch1 inConceptual Framework for Financial Reporting:Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts #8 (September 2010): 22pp;
Warsono 2017_pp. 22-23: “The FASB (2010) and [International Accounting Standards Board] (2010) … explicitly state that the accounting equation does not have to balance. … Such standard board statements have substantial consequences. Not only do the standard boards ignore DEB [double-entry bookkeeping], which retains a balance between the left and right sides of the equation, but the standard boards (regardless of their awareness of such) also defy universal laws, such as the laws of mathematics, thus far always expressed in equilibrium. The standard boards do not provide a sufficient explanation for this inequality, except for a brief statement that must still be discussed.” Sony Warsono Accounting and Mathematics: Revisiting the theory of double-entry Bolton: Lambert Academic 2017=Bottom of Form
[75]Boychuk 2019bRegan Boychuk “Kenney already facing Alberta’s reckoning over mismanaged oilfield cleanup”National Observer (2 May 2019);
Boychuk 2020aRegan Boychuk “Alberta stumbling in the dark in sunset of conventional oil and gas” Calgary Herald (1 February 2020): A14;
Boychuk 2020bRegan Boychuk “On orphan wells, dine-and-dash should not be the business model”CBC Opinion (12 April 2020);
Boychuk2020c Regan Boychuk “Alberta insults taxpayers, shreds polluter pays and shorts workers” National Observer (7 May 2020);
Boychuk2020d Regan Boychuk “The liabilities of profit: The sunset economics of oil and gas in Alberta” Economic Society of Northern Alberta invited presentation (7 October 2020): 106mins + 19 slides;
Boychuk2021a Regan Boychuk “Looting the dregs: SanLing Energy’s suspension is a sign of oilpatch rot”Progress Report (5 March 2021)Top of Form=Bottom of Form
[76]Lavoie 2019 (“Clearing Outside Central Bank” = no double-entry bookkeeping) Marc Lavoie “A system with zero reserves and with clearing outside of the central bank: The Canadian case”Review of Political Economy v31#2 (2019): 145-58;
National Observer 14/5/24: “Last year, RBC, Scotiabank, TD, BMO and CIBC collectively financed fossil fuel companies to the tune of at least $140 billion, according to a report published Monday. Despite the towering sum, it’s a step down from the banks’ financing in 2022, which reached approximately $163 billion. Since the Paris Agreement was signed in late 2015, the Big 5 banks have pumped approximately $1.2 trillion into fossil fuel companies like Enbridge, TC Energy and Trans Mountain.” John Woodside “Canadian banks still huge fossil fuel investors”National Observer (14 May 2024)Top of Form=Bottom of Form
[77]NY Tribune 8/4/67:“It has become known that Russia would at anytime in years past have been very glad to get rid of her icy American desert for two millions of rubbles. … The unprecedented and suspicious hurry to get this treaty through the Senate, without letting the people see its terms … purchased at a price twenty-five times greater than the sum he could have bought it for … is now explained. If it was published, it would be killed stone dead.” “Washington: The Russian treaty”New York Tribune (8 April 1867): 1;
[78]Denny 1930_pp. 407 (too wise to try to govern world), 117-19 (share of Cdn foreign capital): “There is recurring fear in Canada that financial penetration will mean increasing Yankee control of the country. Admittedly such control is now exercised in large measure in the economic field, but less in the way of political interference. … Dr. Hugh L. Keenleyside of the Canadian Department of External Affairs, in his recent book, Canada and the United States … repeats the rather general belief that: “If Canada were to undertake any radical measure of social reform, it is unquestionable that the United States would hesitate to underwrite Canadian loans.”” European correspondent for The Nation, then Indianapolis Times editor and Scripps-Howard’s chief editorial writer Ludwell Denny America Conquers Britain: A record of economic warNew York: Alfred A. Knopf 1930=Bottom of Form
[79]Breen 1993_pp. 441-43 (Abasand 1&2) David H. Breen Alberta’s Petroleum Industry and the Conservation Board Edmonton: University of Alberta and the Energy Resources Conservation Board 1993=Bottom of Form
[80]GoA 2025a Government of Alberta “Taking action to double Alberta’s oil production:The Government of Alberta is working with partners to increase pipeline capacity in pursuit of its goal to double crude oil production and increase exports to the United States” (6 January 2025);=Bottom of Form
Trudeau 2025 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Resignation speechCBC News (6 January 2025)
[81]Trump 2024US President-elect Donald Trump “Announcing the nomination of Ken Howery as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Denmark”(24 December 2024) American Presidency Project online;=Bottom of Form
Trump 2025c: “we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. … Today, I will sign a series of historic executive orders. With these actions, we will begin the complete restoration of America … America will reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world. … The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory … Ambition is the lifeblood of a great nation, and, right now, our nation is more ambitious than any other. … The future is ours, and our golden age has just begun.” US President Donald J. Trump “The inaugural address” (20 January 2025)=Bottom of Form
[82]Levellers 1649_p. 270: “you and your Ancestors got your Property by murther and theft, and you keep it by the same power from us” Gerrard Winstanley et al. “A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England” (20 January 1649) in George H. Sabine (ed.) The Works of Gerrard Winstanley: With an appendix of documents relating to the Digger movement (Ithaca: Cornell University 1941): 269-77;
Fox n.d. Jim Fox “1642-52: The Diggers and the Levellers” Revolutions Per Minute via libcom.org(no date): 5pp;
Baker & Vernon 2012 Philip Baker and Elliot Vernon “The history and the historiography of the Agreements of the People”introduction to Philip Baker and Elliot Vernon (eds.) The Agreements of the People, the Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 2012): 1-27;
Smith 1776_bk1, ch11, v1, p. 276: “There are three parts of produce and three original orders of society. The whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country … naturally divides itself … into three parts; the rent of land, the wages of labour, and the profits of stock; and constitutes a revenue to three different orders of people; to those who live by rent, to those who live by wages, and to those who live by profit. These are the three great, original and constituent orders of every civilized society, from whose revenue that of every other order is ultimately derived.” Adam Smith An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations 5th edn. (ed.) Edwin Canaan (1789; Chicago: University of Chicago 1976);
Patten1892 Simon N. Patten “Burdenless taxation”ch16 in The Theory of Dynamic Economics University of Pennsylvania Political Economy and Public Law Series v3#3 (1892): 103-10 [excerpt];
Debs 1905: “the capitalists, manufacturers, and employers generally have organized for economic and political action in the interest of their class and they are so conscious of their class interests and so responsive to them in every hour of trial that when there is a battle on they move with the precision of a well-drilled army and not the slightest friction prevents complete unity of action; and this is why they are uniformly successful in sweeping the field and leaving their adversaries, the poorly organized and class-unconscious workers, a routed and demoralized mob, with their best fighters stark and dead where they fell in their tracks. There can be no true and lasting working class unity that is not based upon sound principles and that does not express sound working class economics.” Eugene V. Debs “Working class unity” Labor Day speech in Chicago Socialist v6#340 (9 September 1905): 1;
Solidarity 2/9/11 (Wobblies fight police to protect freedom of speech) A fellow worker “IWW defies police: Attempt to regulate length of meetings successfully resisted in Philadelphia” Industrial Workers of the World Solidarity v2#38 (2 September 1911): 1;
Daily Worker 30/5/32“Workers fight back cops in eviction fight: Police swing clubs, jail two: Unemployed council leads fight” US Communist Party Daily Worker v9#128(30 May 1932): 2
Keynes 1936_bk6, ch24, pp. 375-76: ‘I feel sure that the demand for capital is strictly limited in the sense that it would not be difficult to the increase the stock of capital up to a point where its marginal efficiency had fallen to a very low figure. … Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital. Interest today rewards no genuine sacrifice, any more than does rent for land [or resources].’ John Maynard Keynes The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money London: Macmillan 1936;
Pollin 1997 Robert Pollin “’Socialization of investment’ and ‘euthanasia of the rentier’: The relevance of Keynesian policy ideas for the contemporary US economy”ch3 in Philip Arestis and Malcolm Sawyer (eds.) The Relevance of Keynesian Economic Policies Today (London: Macmillan 1997): 57-77 [excerpt]=Bottom of Form
[83]Lane & Sterman 2011 David C. Lane and John D. Sterman “Jay Wright Forrester”ch20 in S. Gass and A. Assad (eds.) Profiles in Operations Research: Pioneers and innovators (New York: Springer 2011): 363-86;
Pool 1992Robert Pool “The third branch of science debuts: Computer simulation has opened a new eye on the world, giving scientists in fields from biology to high-energy physics a way to perform experiments that would be otherwise impossible” Science v256#5053 (3 April 1992): 44-47=Bottom of Form
[84]Chase 1902 + Fiske 1905: (US discovers system dynamics for navy) Admiral J.V. Chase “Sea fights: A mathematical investigation of the effect of superiority of force in combats upon the sea” US Naval War College (1902) + Rear Admiral Bradley Allen Fiske “American naval policy”US Naval Institute(April 1905) discussed inFiske 1916pp. 283-89The Navy as a Fighting Machine New York: C. Scribner’s 1916;
Lanchester 1914 (Britain reveals system dynamics forair force) Frederick William Lanchester “Aircraft in warfare: The dawn of the fourth arm” 14pts Engineering v18 (September-December 1914): 312-13ff reprinted in James R. Newman (ed.) The World of Mathematics (1956; New York: Dover 2000)v4: 2138-57;
Osipov 1915 (Russia reveals system dynamics for army) Military-topographic section chief (Turkestan) Colonel Mikhail Pavlovich Osipov “The influence of the numerical strength of engaged forces in their casualties” Russian War Ministry Military Digest [Voenniy Sbornik] #6-10(June-October 1915) Robert L. Helmbold and Allan S. Relm (trans.) Naval Research Logistics v42#3 (April 1995): 435-90;=Bottom of Form
Forrester 1971(system dynamics’ public-facing originator) Jay W. Forrester World Dynamics (18 February 1971) manuscript inJay Wright Forrester Papers (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): 220pp;
Nordhaus 1971 (system dynamics’ bad faith critic) Yale University Sterling Professor of Economics William D. Nordhaus “World Dynamics: Measurement without data” CF-20510 (May 1971);
Meadows, Meadows, Randers & Behrens 1972_pp. 150-53: “Applying technology to the natural pressures that the environment exerts against any growth process has been so successful in the past that a whole culture has evolved around the principle of fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them. This culture has been reinforced by the apparent immensity of the earth and its resources and by the relative smallness of man and his activities. But the relationship between the earth’s limits and man’s activities is changing. The exponential growth curves are adding millions of people and billions of tons of pollutants to the ecosystem each year. … Yet man does not seem to learn by running into the earth’s obvious limits. … The basic choice … Is it better to try to live within that limit by accepting a self-imposed restriction on growth? Or is it to preferable to go on growing until some other natural limit arises, in the hope that at that time another technological leap will allow growth to continue still longer? For the last several hundred years human society has followed the second course so consistently and successfully that the first choice has been all but forgotten.” Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers and William W. Behrens III The Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind New York: Universe March 1972; see further endnote 32;
Forrester 1973Jay W. Forrester “Response to a paper on World Dynamics by Nordhaus” (26 February 1973): 46pp in “Nordhaus, 1972-1975” Jay Wright Forrester Papers (Massachusetts Institute of Technology): 145-91
[85]Collier & Horowitz 1976_pp. 305-6: In 1953, the Ford Foundation convened“a Midcentury Conference on Resources for the Future. After President Eisenhower had greeted the 1,600 delegates, a working paper prepared by the Brookings Institution was passed around. … One of the results of the conference was Ford’s decision to underwrite an ongoing organization to develop policy on resource issues and then make sure that this policy stayed in the front lobe of Washington’s consciousness. Resources For the Future (as the organization was called) provided a think-tank atmosphere where social scientists could discuss pollution … one day and the extraction of raw materials from Southeast Asia the next. … Resources For the Future was also the locus for an almost incestuous intermingling of the men who made up the Rockefellers’ conservation family.” Peter Collier and David Horowitz The Rockefellers: An American dynasty(1976; New York: Signet 1977);
AIME 1968: “since 1954 Sam H. Schurr has been director of Energy & Mineral Resources program of Resources for the Future Inc. … Mr. Schurr’s many years of gov service began with his wartime employment in the Office of Strategic Services. From 1950-53 he was chief economist for the US Bureau of Mines” American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers “AIME mineral economics award: Sam H. Schurr” (1968);
Zimmerman 1957_pp. 25, 31-32: “Conservation was viewed as a restraining force which had to be placed on private enterprise for the sake of protecting the common weal. … In fact, there is a definite antibusiness tinge attached to the traditional concept of conservation. How is it to be explained, then, that the petroleum conservation program was sponsored largely by private enterprise and to this day enjoys the support of many in the industry? That is precisely where semantics comes in. … There happens to be “something singular” about petroleum, because of which society has decided it cannot afford to rely exclusively on the free play of market forces maximizing present economic values but must instead practice conservation, because of which in almost every oil-producing state in this country constitutional amendments or conservation laws or both have been passed which have lifted petroleum out of the general category of those goods having a production schedule use rate that can be left to the discretion of private planning agents, and have subjected it to public rules and regulations requiring different use rates. … It is the legitimate function, indeed the duty, of the economist to point out what action appears economically sound and unsound to him. But he is not the sole judge and final arbiter of policies society may adopt in matters other than purely economic. … The fact is, by an overwhelming vote society seems to have been decided not to tolerate waste of petroleum even if some private entrepreneurs may find that such waste helps them to maximize the present value of the flow of (expected) net revenues.” University of Texas professor of economics and resources Erich Walter Zimmermann Conservation in the Production of Petroleum: A study in industrial controlNew Haven: Yale University 1957 [series sponsored by American Petroleum Institute];=Bottom of Form
“The measure of the “closeness of fit” of the regression line to the actual observations (the “coefficient of determination”) is an astonishing 99.9 percent. … Somehow the major oil companies have been able to “orchestrate” these and other aberrations into a smooth and uninterrupted upward trend in overall supply.” John M. Blair The Control of Oil New York: Pantheon 1976;
NYT 23/12/76: “chief economist of the Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1957 to 1970, died Tuesday at his home. He was 62 years old. Dr. Blair, who was a professor of economics in the University of South Florida at Tampa at his death, had just completed a book, “The Control of Oil,” published by Pantheon Books. It deals with cartels and practices.” “Dr. John M. Blair, 62: US ex-economist: Long served Senate antitrust group before teaching in Florida”New York Times (23 December 1976): 20;
Time 28/2/77: “shortly after completing the marathon grind of writing Control (it contains 789 explanatory notes), he died at 62 of a heart attack at his Florida home.” “Spanking the sisters”Time v109#9 (28 February 1977): 47-48
[86]Bamford 2024 James Bamford “How US intelligence and an American company feed Israel’s killing machine in Gaza: Because it isn’t so much the bombs that kill but the list that puts civilians in the way of the bombs”The Nation (12 April 2024);=Bottom of Form
AP 18/2/25: “US tech giants have quietly empowered Israel to track and kill many more alleged militants more quickly in Gaza and Lebanon through a sharp spike in artificial intelligence and computing services. But the number of civilians killed has also soared, fueling fears that these tools are contributing to the deaths of innocent people. … After a deadly surprise attack by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, its use of Microsoft and OpenAI technology skyrocketed, an Associated Press investigation found. The investigation also revealed new details of how AI systems select targets and ways they can go wrong, including faulty data or flawed algorithms. It was based on internal documents, data and exclusive interviews with current and former Israeli officials and company employees.” Michael Biesecker, Sam Mednick and Garance Burke “As Israel uses US-made AI models in war, concerns arise about tech’s role in who lives and who dies” Associated Press (18 February 2025)
[87]BOE Report 11/12/24 Terry Etam “Proposed $70 billion AI data centre in MD of Greenview could launch an incredible new chapter for western Canadian energy”BOE Report (11 December 2024);
Varcoe 22/2/25: “New data from the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) shows more than 10,000 megawatts of potential demand for proposed data centre projects have now applied to connect to the provincial transmission system.” Energy columnist Chris Varcoe “Two promising signs for Alberta’s economy? 15 proposed data centres and billions raised by tech sector: ‘The Alberta economy is a door—and it’s widening and more is spinning through it now’”Calgary Herald (22 February 2025)
Regan Boychuk is an independent public interest researcher studying Alberta’s oilpatch.
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President Trump has said that the US will impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Tuesday, saying there’s “no room left” for the two countries to avoid the measures. Trump signed an executive order on February 1 to impose the 25% tariffs on all goods coming from Mexico and…
After spending five days imprisoned, I was released without restriction on my ability to discuss the charges brought against me for criticizing Israel. It’s a small win for free expression and Palestine campaigning.
In court on Monday the judge effectively forced the crown to drop its bid to block me from mentioning arch anti Palestinian Dahlia Kurtz. The crown wanted to restrict my ability to mention the name of the Jewish supremacist who instigated a police complaint against me.
The outpouring of support has been heartwarming and helpful. On Thursday morning 30 joined an emergency rally to accompany me to the police station where I was detained.
The waiting is almost over, Donald Trump is about to hit America’s workers with the largest tax increase they have ever seen. Trump’s taxes on imports (tariffs) from Canada, Mexico, and China will cost people in the United States somewhere around $400 billion a year, or around $3,000 a household. This is far larger than any tax increase we’ve seen in the last half-century…
While living in the Middle East, a Palestinian friend taught me about Arabic culture, which he said was still preserved in Yemen. Arabic etiquette, he told me, was that a guest was to be protected, housed, and otherwise looked after.
White House etiquette is something else. I was quite taken aback by viewing how Donald Trump and JD Vance ganged up on their Ukrainian guest Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This is not to side with Zelenskyy who is a disagreeable personage to me; by refusing a security agreement, he set the stage for an unwinnable war against Russia which has condemned hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men to death.
Zelenskyy made some bizarre and distorted utterances during the videoed meeting. Nonetheless, there is a proper way for Trump and Vance to express disagreement. But diplomacy, etiquette, and niceties are often rare in the bullyverse of Trump.
Moreover, an often heard complaint from Trump is that things are not fair. Was it fair to have two native English speakers against one non-native English speaker?
Fairness
A common saying tells us that bees are more attracted to honey than vinegar. Maybe the Trump-led administration doesn’t give credence to this saying, or it believes it can bully others into submission — probably the latter. Trump believes he can use tariffs as a big stick to gain an upper hand in trade. Given the size of the US economy and its willingness to resort to violence to back its demands, smaller countries find themselves in a precarious situation. Without another big country’s backing, smaller countries are susceptible to regime change operations. Witness was happened to the Syrian government in late 2024.
Fortunately, China is willing to engage in win-win trade with other nations. The Chinese honey appears to be preferable for much of the Global South to the American vinegar. China is also a military power, and it can readily defend itself against any US military provocations. China is unlikely to let the US physically interfere in its trade arrangements with willing partners. Neither is Russia about to do this. This has led to a global realignment, one feature of which is the deepening relationships of China and Russia with African countries.
But the record shows that Donald Trump does not limit himself to smaller countries. During his first administration, Trump began a trade war with China, and he does not look to be letting up this time. Trump, however, considers the world as his oyster, to deal with as he pleases. Even the US’s erstwhile allies are targeted, including its northern neighbor, Canada.
Will Canada Supplicate Trump?
United States President Donald Trump sounded off during the first cabinet meeting of his second term, among other topics was that of Canadian sovereignty:
I say Canada should be our 51st state. There’s no tariffs, no nothing. And I say that we give them military protection. They have a very small military; they spend very little money on military. On NATO they are just about last in terms of payment because it’s not fair. It’s not fair that they’re not paying their way. And if they had to pay their way, they couldn’t exist.
Upon what basis does Trump claim that the US is protecting Canada? Because Canada is a member of NATO and NORAD? The latter allows the US military access into Canada, the junior partner in the relationship. And just who are these enemies that the US is purportedly protecting Canada from? Is there any country posing a credible military threat to Canada? If so, it seems that the US would come first to mind. If Canada is a willing and uncoerced member of certain military organizations, then Canada should abide by its agreed upon commitments. Canada does come up short of the 2% minimum of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to defence spending in NATO, but that 2% minimum is a guideline and not a hard-and-fast obligation. Trump speaks about fairness, but how fair is it that one NATO member gripes about what it determines another member’s contribution should be?
And why is Trump demanding 5% of each NATO member’s GDP as a contribution? This is alluded to by NATO:
To carry out its missions and tasks, NATO needs Allies to invest in interoperable, cutting-edge and cost-effective equipment. To that end, NATO plays an important role in helping countries decide how and where to invest in their defence.
Which country is best situated to reap the financial benefits of demanding interoperability among NATO members? According to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the world’s leading seller of arms, the US, increased its arms sales from 34% in the period of 2014 to 2018 to 42% in the period of 2019 t0 2023. Adhering to the Trumpian definition of economic fairness, is it fair that the US with 4% of the world’s population should dominate arms sales, especially considering that interoperability is expected among NATO members?
The rationale, at various points, have included: building up domestic American industry, preventing the illegal importation of fentanyl, stopping illegal border crossings, and reducing the United States’ modest trade deficit with Canada. Trump has also complained about the access of U.S. banks to Canadian markets and the amount of money the U.S. spends on continental defence.
The National Post questioned Trump’s facts: “he often says the United States subsidizes Canada between $100 billion and $200 billion. The trade deficit, in fact, is more like $32 billion, while America’s global trade deficit [is] around $1 trillion.”
Trump is unrestrained vis-à-vis the US’s biggest trade partner: “We don’t need them for the cars, we don’t need them for lumber. We don’t need them for anything. We don’t need them for energy, we have more energy than they do.”
Among the many reasons, there is one area of deep importance that suffices to emphatically underline why Canadians will never allow themselves to become Americans under present conditions. Canadians are very fond of their medical-care-for-all system. The system is not perfect, and Canadians will complain about when the governments (health is a provincial jurisdiction) curtail funding; long waiting times; and the shortages of doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers. However, many Canadians have heard about the financial horrors that can be visited upon susceptible Americans who are without medical coverage. That is something the vast majority of Canadians would never countenance in their country.
Given the desire of most Americans for medical care for all (62% according to a Gallup poll conducted 6-20 November 2024) maybe they ought to clamor to become Canada’s 11th province.
Most Canadians have never heard of a Susu, Pardner, Hagbad, Chit Fund, or Tontine, collectively known by their academic name, ROSCA. But that’s about to change. Especially if Dr. Caroline Shenaz Hossein has a say—and the freedom to say it.
For over ten years now, Dr. Hossein, award winning University of Toronto scholar, author, international speaker, and daughter of Caribbean immigrant parents, has been an unstoppable researcher and fiery advocate for the acceptance of ROSCAs as part of our financial system.
Dr Hossein, also a founding member of the Banker Ladies Council, has been holding the torch through her research for over a decade
The oil boom in Alberta, Canada has brought Big Oil in confrontation with First Nations for decades. This year, a breakthrough struggle occurred as the Woodland Cree First Nation established a blockade to stop construction of new oil wells by Obsidian Energy. Demanding respect for their treaty rights and a more equitable deal, the struggle of the Woodland Cree united Treaty 8 First Nations and local non-Indigenous industry owners against Obsidian. Brandi Morin reports from Treaty 8 territory in this exclusive documentary from The Real News and Ricochet Media.
Pre-Production: Brandi Morin, Geordie Day, Maximillian Alvarez, Ethan Cox Videographer: Geordie Day Video Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
A transcript will be made available as soon as possible.
The Green Party has called on Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to rule out Aotearoa New Zealand joining the AUKUS military technical pact in any capacity following the row over Ukraine in the White House over the weekend.
President Donald Trump’s “appalling treatment” of his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a “clear warning that we must avoid AUKUS at all costs”, said Green Party foreign affairs and Pacific issues spokesperson Teanau Tuiono.
“Aotearoa must stand on an independent and principled approach to foreign affairs and use that as a platform to promote peace.”
US President Donald Trump has paused all military aid for Ukraine after the “disastrous” Oval Office meeting with President Zelenskyy in another unpopular foreign affairs move that has been widely condemned by European leaders.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chair of Ukraine’s Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, declared that Trump appeared to be trying to push Kyiv to capitulate on Russia’s terms.
He was quoted as saying that the aid pause was worse than the 1938 Munich Agreement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.
‘Danger of Trump leadership’
Tuiono, who is the Green Party’s first tagata moana MP, said: “What we saw in the White House at the weekend laid bare the volatility and danger of the Trump leadership — nothing good can come from deepening our links to this administration.
“Christopher Luxon should read the room and rule out joining any part of the AUKUS framework.”
Tuiono said New Zealand should steer clear of AUKUS regardless of who was in the White House “but Trump’s transactional and hyper-aggressive foreign policy makes the case to stay out stronger than ever”.
“Our country must not join a campaign that is escalating tensions in the Pacific and talking up the prospects of a war which the people of our region firmly oppose.
“Advocating for, and working towards, peaceful solutions to the world’s conflicts must be an absolute priority for our country,” Tuiono said.
Five Eyes network ‘out of control’
Meanwhile, in the 1News weekly television current affairs programme Q&A, former Prime Minister Helen Clark challenged New Zealand’s continued involvement in the Five Eyes intelligence network, describing it as “out of control”.
Her comments reflected growing concern by traditional allies and partners of the US over President Trump’s handling of long-standing relationships.
Clark said the Five Eyes had strayed beyond its original brief of being merely a coordinating group for intelligence agencies in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.
“There’s been some talk in the media that Trump might want to evict Canada from it . . . Please could we follow?” she said.
“I mean, really, the problem with Five Eyes now has become a basis for policy positioning on all sorts of things.
“And to see it now as the basis for joint statements, finance minister meetings, this has got a bit out of control.”
A chart of 23 government departments, agencies, committees, and processes dedicated to responding to foreign interference. Source: Final PIFI Report
Written by: Wawa Li and William Ging Wee Dere
The final report of the Public Inquiry on Foreign Interference (PIFI), released by Commissioner Marie-Josée Hogue on January 26, 2025, has become the subject of intense public scrutiny, especially within the Chinese Canadian community. Coincidentally, it came out days after US President Donald Trump threatened Canada with economic warfare.
The Foreign Interference Commission examined and assessed interference by China, Russia, and other foreign actors on the 2019 and 2021 general elections at both national and electoral district levels, including evaluating the flow of information to senior decision-makers and the capacity of federal institutions to detect, deter, and counter such interference. The 16-month inquiry heard from the intelligence and security establishment, civil servants, politicians, government officials and also held public hearings to investigate the integrity of Canada’s democratic processes and address any adverse impacts resulting from foreign interference. The total cost of the inquiry was over $9 million CAD. The report concluded that foreign interference on the two general elections was inconsequential.
One solid outcome of the PIFI inquiry is the exposing of the federal foreign interference bureaucracy. There are 23 federal entities, involved in responding to foreign interference in government departments, agencies, processes and deputy minister committees, as well as the offices of the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada. On top of that, there are four review bodies like the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP). PIFI did not say how many people are employed in the search for foreign interference. However, if jobs are created to find FI, the efforts to find foreign interference could be limitless inside this bureaucracy.
Arguably, the inquiry, driven more by sensationalist media coverage, self-serving politicians and unverified intelligence than by rigorous investigation — relied on shallow reports and baseless witness claims to justify urgent government action. The danger of the narrative manufactured by the final report and through the inquiry about foreign interference, which has been weaponized by media, law enforcement, and opportunistic political forces, ultimately can serve as a tool for domestic repression that unfairly targets the Chinese Canadian community. Its impact is tangible; it undermines the right to fully participate in the democratic process; it affects the livelihoods of community members—from low-income individuals to academics and diaspora politicians—and denying them the right to live equally and safely under both Canadian and Québec human rights charters, while also crippling the essential work of community service centers. A crucial factor is the importance of understanding the profound harm inflicted by this manufactured fear. The true damage lies in the manipulation of public sentiment to marginalize dissenting voices and restrict democratic rights—a perspective that has been repeatedly sidelined throughout the inquiry – yet it wasn’t any less significant.
Examining the testimonies behind the final report
In the final report, the commission acknowledged that several testimonies lacked definitive links to China, yet unverified claims and opportunistic political narratives have heavily influenced the report. Unsubstantiated accounts — ranging from a formula[AJ1] purportedly identifying foreign agents based solely on community event participation to anonymous testimonies from a community concern group — have been used to paint Chinese organizations as proxies for the PRC. Selected examples, such as disputes at a museum opening and a controversial case aimed at stifling political debate, are cited without evidence, relying instead on hearsay, innuendos, and stereotypical warnings.
One of these warnings is that anyone who expresses a political opinion on the Chinese language social media WeChat is suspected of having connections to China. The recent fear mongering (Feb 7) is the unsubstantiated report by Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections Task Force (SITE), set up to monitor foreign election interference, that a “‘malicious’ campaign against Liberal leadership candidate Chrystia Freeland on the social media platform WeChat with alleged ties to China.”
The PIFI report has given the media and parliamentary committees free reign without having to provide proof. These baseless allegations are particularly alarming in a climate where a new law threatens lifelong imprisonment for anyone labeled as a foreign agent, echoing McCarthyite tactics that jeopardize open political discourse and undermine community trust.
Political opportunism and the manipulation of public sentiment
United by a common thread of opportunism, it is essential to highlight this recurring pattern and hold public figures accountable, as they are expected to act in the people’s best interests while their actions profoundly impact ordinary citizens.
During PIFI hearings and the pre-testimony interview process, NDP MP Jenny Kwan claimed, based on her opinion, that she was excluded from community events. She implied that Chinese Canadian organizations are compelled to align with her mainstream narrative or risk being accused of foreign interference. She even offered her own formula for identifying foreign agents in Vancouver, suggesting that organizations which once welcomed her but have since stopped doing so are likely proxies for the PRC. For example, she pointed to the Chinese Canadian Museum’s decision not to invite her to the podium at its July 2023 opening as evidence of this interference. In retrospect, a Chinese Canadian senator noted that he, too, attended the event without being singled out, emphasizing that politicians do not have an inherent right to be invited to community events and that organizers should not be labeled as foreign agents out of personal spite.
Anonymous testimony, not under oath and without cross-examination taken as truth
Testimonies from the Chinese Canadian Concern Group on Chinese Communist Party Human Rights Violations underpinned many conclusions about interference and “transnational repression” in the community, even though the report acknowledged that these witnesses testified anonymously, without being under oath, nor subjected to cross-examination. Consequently, much of the report is based on hearsay, political opinions, and innuendo rather than solid evidence. This group received a grant totalling more than $334k from PIFI to testify, collaborated with the Inquiry and even boasted in its statement (January 30, 2025) on the Final PIFI Report:
“We are pleased that 15 of our recommendations were wholly or partially adopted, focusing on media, social media regulation, education, government engagement with diaspora communities, election integrity, a whole-of-government foreign interference strategy, combating misinformation, enhancing intelligence transparency, and national security measures.”
The political and ideological affinity between this group and the Inquiry Commission could not be more obvious.
The Commissioner’s discussion of Conservative MP Michael Chong—who is considered a potential foreign minister under a potential Prime Minister Poilievre — suffers from the same lack of factual support, relying instead on stereotypes and unfounded claims like “your family is in danger,” despite Chong having no close family ties in China or Hong Kong.
The report uses the case of former Conservative MP Kenneth Chiu to demonstrate Chinese interference and makes no mention of Senator Yuen Pau Woo’s submission to counter Chiu’s innuendos. This is an attack on the rights of the Chinese Canadian community to open political debate based on political differences and the rights of Chinese media to be able to counter politicians’ political views and actions. The Chiu case used by the Commissioner of PIFI is a case of stifling open political debate. It is also an attack on Chinese social media WeChat used by over one million Chinese Canadians.
As cautioned by Senator Woo, these examples would be almost amusing if not for the consequences under a law that could imprison someone for life if labeled a foreign agent involved in political activity or to be “in association with” a foreign entity, e.g. attending a foreign embassy-hosted event; meeting foreign officials; sharing similar views; or maintaining ties with organizations linked to one’s country of origin. Witnesses at the Foreign Interference Inquiry, including prominent human rights activists in Vancouver, have accused Chinese community leaders of being foreign agents without evidence, seemingly aiming to have these leaders prosecuted under C-70 — the law to “counter foreign interference.”
In contrast, the new US Attorney General, Pam Bondi has ended criminal enforcement of the American Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), after which C-70 was based. Many Republicans objected to FARA when it was used to charge Trump supporters such as Paul Manafort. This shows the utilitarian nature of such a foreign interference law when it could be used to arrest and jail political adversaries. This contrasts to the case of Li Tang “Henry” Liang, Boston hotel worker and union activist charged under FARA in 2023 for advocating peaceful relations between the US and China. Mr. Liang was found not guilty in a Boston court on February 10, 2025, following a six-day trial, after being charged as an agent of China.
The impact, the repression and fearmongering of foreign interference hysteria on Chinese Canadian rights
The PIFI report notably omits how national repression undermines the democratic rights of the Chinese Canadian community — a reality brought into sharp focus by the case of Service à la famille chinoise du Grand Montréal and its sister organization, Centre Sino-Québec. In March 2023, following information from a Spanish NGO, the RCMP announced to the media an investigation into alleged clandestine “Chinese police stations” operating from these organizations. To date, no charges have been filed, and the RCMP has provided no details on what constitutes a clandestine police station.
The repercussions have been severe: critical community services—from French-language instruction for new immigrants, legal and employment advice, senior recreation and youth internships—have been sharply curtailed amid government funding cuts immediately following media reports. Last spring, the stigmatization stemming from these allegations led to tenant losses, prompting a bank to refuse the renewal of the community center’s mortgage. In a desperate bid to keep the center afloat, board directors used their own assets as collateral to secure an extended loan, and in March 2024, the organizations filed a lawsuit against the RCMP—a suit that remains unanswered.
The only mention in the PIFI report of the “Chinese police station” is that the RCMP has deployed “disruptive tactics.” An example could be the parking of a mega bus in July 2024 in the heart of Chinatown and a squad of police agents going door to door, disrupting businesses and residents. Chinatown people were intimidated by the police presence and kept silent.
In response to the mounting crisis the organizations, led by executive director Ms. Xixi Li and Carole Cheung, President of the Board of Chinese Family Services of Greater Montreal, launched a defamation suit against the RCMP in March 2024. “It is unfortunate that the actions of the RCMP have caused so much suffering,” Cheung stated. The RCMP has twice requested delays with the court case—stalling first for nine months and then for an additional four months. If there are no more delays, the RCMP is expected to respond to the lawsuit by May 2025.
Carole Cheung, President of the Board of Chinese Family Services of Greater Montreal said:
“It is deeply regrettable that the actions of the RCMP have caused nearly two years of suffering for our community through the loss of essential services. We no longer have French classes in Chinatown or Brossard; our support for vulnerable seniors and women experiencing intimate partner violence has been diminished; our intake services for new immigrants have been curtailed; and we have lost vital assistance in employment research. We have cooperated with the RCMP investigation from the beginning, and we urge them to allocate the necessary resources to complete the investigation as soon as possible and to stop the bleeding of social services for our community.”
Amidst these developments, the PIFI report also makes sweeping and unsubstantiated claims about the People’s Republic of China (PRC), labeling it the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions and deeming Canada a “high priority target” — a claim made without justification, evidence or logic. By relying heavily on hearsay and insinuation, the report contends that China uses the Chinese Canadian community as a proxy for its “repressive” agenda, thereby casting suspicion on community members. Furthermore, the report’s gratuitous statements—that China seeks to control diaspora communities, shape international opinions, and influence Canadian politicians — blur the line between legitimate security concerns and racist fearmongering and profiling.
A century after the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act, a new form of exclusion is emerging — one that does not target all Chinese people in Canada but seeks instead to divide Chinese Canadians into “Good Chinese” and “Bad Chinese.” The so-called “Bad Chinese” are those who hold views that may be sympathetic to the PRC or associate with groups considered enemies of the West. They are made to feel that they don’t belong here. Traditional anti-racism and human rights groups have largely failed to recognize this subtle yet dangerous threat, often justifying the suppression of rights for these individuals based solely on their perceived political leanings or associations with the Chinese government. As new forms of exclusion become normalized, the weaponization of foreign interference narratives has fostered suspicions about Chinese Canadians and others based on little more than rumors, innuendo, and prejudice. This presumption of disloyalty — targeting those who work to improve relations with China or reject prevailing narratives about a “China Threat” — has led to their stigmatization and, in some cases, adverse consequences for their careers and livelihood.
In essence, what might be dismissed as bureaucratic overreach is, in reality, a deliberate strategy of national repression through intimidation, aimed at suppressing democratic activity within the Chinese Canadian community. Both the hollow allegations and the resulting financial and social devastation experienced by community centers like Chinese Family Service underscore a broader assault on the rights and services that are vital to the community’s well-being.
How anti-China bias and institutional racism shape policy
The report fuels an anti-China narrative that has intensified anti-Asian hate and led to the discrimination and stigmatization of Canadians with connections to China, particularly Chinese Canadians. Out of 51 recommendations, not one addresses systemic racism, racial profiling, or the exclusion that arises from misleading intelligence accusations, all of which undermine the democratic rights of the Chinese Canadian community. Instead, the report relies on vague assertions that cast a dark cloud over Chinese Canadians—a reflection of Canada’s broader, problematic perception of China that echoes the historic “Yellow Peril.” The only reference to stigmatization is used to suggest that it could benefit foreign actors, rather than acknowledging its real impact. Notably, there was no Chinese Canadian member on the PIFI Commission, underscoring the existing institutional biases.
This pervasive bias is further entrenched by external pressures, groupthink, and domestic policies that have now permeated issues such as housing affordability, school enrollment, and social cohesion. Although scapegoating is a challenge faced by many visible minorities, Chinese Canadians are uniquely affected by the current geopolitical context. The PIFI Report exemplifies this trend. Meanwhile, the panic over alleged foreign interference has smoothed the way for draconian measures like Bill C-70, which can be used to silence, stigmatize, intimidate, and even incarcerate Canadians for holding views that might align with a foreign state. Ironically, such a law may dissuade immigrants with ties to their home countries from engaging in Canadian politics — a paradox that might have been intended all along.
Canada’s policy towards China is reflected in its attitude towards Chinese Canadians. Yellow Peril thinking of the 19th century paved the way for the Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Act when China was weak and the “sick man of Asia.” Today, China is strong and challenging the West for a place in the global economy. The present spectre of the Yellow Peril (fear of the Chinese threatening white or western hegemony) is reflected in the “China Threat” and Chinese interference. This translates to Sinophobia against Chinese Canadians who do not adhere to the mainstream narrative as spelled out by PIFI.
The Public Inquiry on Foreign Interference report, largely sidesteps the significant role of the U.S.-driven disinformation. While Commissioner Hogue warns that disinformation is Canada’s greatest threat, she omits the fact that the United States is arguably the most consequential source of such falsehoods. By suggesting that neutralizing disinformation from China, Russia, India, and Iran (all BRICS countries) will secure Canada, the report offers a dangerously misleading narrative.
BC Senator Yuen Pau Woo, speaking at the Vancouver Chinese Cultural Center on Feb 2, 2025, criticized this narrow focus, noting that many Canadian opinion leaders are caught in a collective delusion driven by ideological blinkers and outdated prejudices. Despite myths about Canada’s unique friendship with China since the 1970s, an instinct to demonize China remains deeply ingrained. While there are concerns about China’s economic and social challenges — Canadians, under the auspices of PIFI, do not have the right to interfere in China’s internal affairs. Portraying China as an existential threat to Canada is, in Senator Woo’s view, sheer insanity.
Furthermore, the Senator warned that the growing pressure to align with the U.S. on national security matters — spanning foreign influence, espionage, cybercrime, intellectual property theft, and sensitive research collaborations — will inevitably affect Canada’s policy decisions. He argued that it will take considerable courage and wisdom for Canadian leaders to navigate a security relationship with the U.S. without discriminating against citizens or infringing on their rights. In this climate, Chinese Canadians, especially those with ties to China, risk becoming scapegoats for policies reminiscent of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which emerged following the Royal Commission on Chinese Immigration. Tragically, these measures are likely to gain broad public support, as many Canadians have already bought into the pervasive “China threat” narrative. Although not every proponent of this view is overtly racist, the current context undoubtedly provides fertile ground for racist impulses to flourish. To mitigate these harms, the Senator urged increased awareness and solidarity within the Chinese Canadian community.
Senator Woo stated, in his February 2, 2025, speech:
“We must resist this emerging form of Chinese exclusion. To champion our rights and freedoms, I intend to establish an organization—tentatively called Rights and Freedoms of Chinese Canadians—because this is not a battle I can fight alone. My final appeal to all Chinese Canadians is this: we must not allow prejudice or ideology to dictate who qualifies as a “good” Chinese Canadian. … We must unite rather than allow divisions to weaken our collective strength.
We must also remember the trials faced by our community centers, such as Chinese Family Services, which have borne the brunt of baseless allegations and crippling financial hardships. The resilience of these centers—rescued by the united efforts of community members—serves as a powerful testament to our strength and unity. Their perseverance is a call to action for all of us to come together, support one another, and protect our democratic rights against any form of exclusion.”
Wawa Li is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher in digital arts and decolonial anthropology at Concordia University. The core of her research lies in the literature of resistance movements and art as a technology of liberation. She is an active member of the Housing Rights Committee affiliated with Montreal’s Chinatown Roundtable (since 2021) and has worked as a research assistant in artificial intelligence for the Indigenous Futures Research Center at Concordia University (2023). Above all, she is a family elder and a Yang-style Tai Chi apprentice. She testified at the PIFI public hearings but to no avail.
William Ging Wee Dere is adocumentary filmmaker and author of “Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2019), winner of the 2020 Blue Metropolis/Conseil des arts de Montréal Diversity Prize. He was a leading activist in the 2-decade movement to redress the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act.
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On February 20, long-time Canadian Dimension columnist and contributor Yves Engler was arrested by Montréal police at the behest of pro-Israel media personality Dahlia Kurtz. In today’s Canada, offending Zionist influencers is apparently enough to land you behind bars.
Canadians involved in progressive politics, from the left-wing of the NDP and Greens to the Communist Party, read Engler’s work and admire his commitment to social struggle. For decades, he has organized in support of just causes, from helping stop war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at Concordia University in 2002, to tirelessly confronting Canadian politicians about their complicity in the genocide in Gaza, to penning a vast catalogue of work that shatters complacent illusions about Canada’s benevolence and reveals the often cynical, profit-driven, anti-democratic heart of Ottawa’s foreign policy.
Like zombies rising from the grave, many long-rejected oil pipeline projects like Energy East are suddenly being promoted as national necessities in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s musings about annexing Canada.
To be clear, most Canadians agree that Canada needs to take Trump’s threats seriously and accelerate long-overdue efforts to make our country less economically dependent on our newly menacing neighbour. Previous political impediments to building interprovincial infrastructure are melting away as Canadians realize protecting our national sovereignty is more important than the priorities of any given region or industry.
But before the country considers writing another blank cheque for an oil industry mega-project that may take a decade to complete, let’s make sure to “skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”
