The News Rundown

Canada brushes off yet another country begging it for LNG

Canada has abundant natural resources and has the ability to be an energy superpower. That energy ranges from our uranium deposits to the oil sands and conventional oil found in Alberta, and of course the abundant reserves of natural gas found across the country.
People want our natural gas. This week Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a visit to Canada requesting natural gas.
The answer is seemingly no.
This was also the response to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who came to Canada in 2022 looking for liquified natural gas and was suggested that Germany should buy hydrogen instead from Canada.
Germany eventually signed a deal to buy LNG from Qatar. The same Qatar that provides refuge to the executives of Hamas.
The sale to Germany made sense due to the geopolitical reasons of getting Europe as a whole off of Russian gas. Russia provides a large portion of Europe’s gas supply and there has been a push to get off that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began.
In late 2022 we covered the Trudeau government’s response to Germany asking for LNG and the response was that the Russian invasion of Ukraine accelerated Canada’s move away from oil and gas.
Reading between the lines, this was the reason that Trudeau told German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that there was “no business case for Canada to sell LNG to Europe.”
And the insidious thing that Trudeau did was that he took Scholz to a hydrogen farm in Newfoundland that may eventually be able to export the product.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida came to Canada in January, 2023 looking for an LNG export agreement.
Japan, also looking to end reliance on Chinese and Russian gas, was hoping for something from Canada but all that’s on the menu that comes to this is crickets. There were no new commitments from the federal government for Japan.
Now what about Greece? Greece is a smaller country economically than Germany but what if we told you it was more important as a customer than Germany?
The Greek Prime Minister is a former investment banker who got his education at Harvard and went to the pain of doing interviews in Canada to make the case for LNG sales to Greece.
His own perspective is that LNG is not just for the Greek market but also for the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
Mitsotakis said that Greece could also potentially even supply Ukraine!
Mitsotakis also said, “Canada is a country (for) which we share so many values … I think we see eye to eye on many of the challenges that we face.”
The problem: Trudeau never mentioned anything about selling gas to Greece in the communications put forward by the Prime Minister’s Office.
What we are seeing here is a continued pattern of the federal government pursuing anti-development policies that would both improve the wealth of Canadians and get our friends off products provided by our adversaries.
The Trudeau government at this point seems insistent on pursuing its ideological whims despite all other policy options that would improve the health and well-being of our international alliances.
Many people when voting typically think of their interests first and what the government can do for them but on the whole, elections have consequences.
From Trudeau’s majority victory in 2015 to the subsequent pluralities awarded to him by the Canadian public, all these elections have had consequences and lead to where we are today.
The LNG Canada export terminal being built in Kitimat, BC is set to go online in 2025 and export 14 million tonnes of LNG to Asia. Credit needs to be given to the Horgan government for not stomping too hard on this project when they came to power.
Elections have consequences and Canadians in all provinces at the federal level need to be aware of what energy policies mean to them.
And because of this the federal government is free to pursue its ideological whims and the provinces can only do so much to push a policy that requires at least some federal involvement.
It’s a disservice to Canadians that the media doesn’t highlight the huge missed opportunities.
Supplementals:

The BC NDP government, with a draft agreement that has been 50 years in the making, has officially recognized Aboriginal title to the Haida Nation over the islands of Haida Gwaii, formerly called the Queen Charlotte Islands, located off the coast of Northern BC. The agreement officially recognizes and affirms the nation's right over the land of Haida Gwaii under Section 35 of the Constitution — which affirms the rights of Indigenous people. And not just some of the land, or most of it, but all 10,000 square kilometres of the islands.
The agreement sets out a new set of rules for how land will be governed on Haida Gwaii — along with a two-year transition process that will focus on how land resource decision-making will be addressed, starting with protected areas, fishing lodges and forestry, according to the document.
Gaagwiis Jason Alsop, president of the Council of the Haida Nation, said "This is a step in towards trying to find a path forward for more of a peaceful coexistence with ... the Haida Nation, Haida people and the people who make Haida Gwaii home. It really will create the space to continue to further develop and refine our Haida law or a way of managing the land based on Haida history, culture and values."
However, some jurisdictional responsibilities, such as health, education, transportation and fire and emergency services, will remain in the hands of the province and municipalities on Haida Gwaii, and the agreement won't impact current municipal boundaries or functions. The Haida council president said: "We recognize we are an island. There's a lot of services and parts of managing the islands that are going to take time to build up the revenues and the capacity."
While Canadian courts have confirmed that Aboriginal title exists, proving title to specific lands can be very difficult.
The only First Nation in B.C. to ever prove title through the courts were the Tsilhqot’in, who were able to prove continuous and exclusive occupation of a small portion of land within a larger claimed traditional territory in a 2014 Supreme Court decision.
Because of territorial overlap, and the fact some First Nations may have historically moved around within a given territory, proving continuous and exclusive occupation of specific lands can prove difficult for some First Nations.
However, the Haida don't have that challenge. There appears to be little dispute that the Haida exclusively occupied Haida Gwaii for thousands of years, and that they never ceded title to the islands that make up Haida Gwaii.
The Haida do have a uniquely strong legal case for control of the Haida Gwaii, as unusually for BC, no other First Nations group claims the islands as their traditional territory. This was noted twenty years ago by the Supreme Court of Canada in a 2004 case (Haida versus B.C. Ministry of Forests) over logging rights on Crown land on Haida Gwaii.
Now that the draft agreement on title implementation has been reached, the Haida Nation and the provincial government expect to finalize and approve it at some point in April.
The CBC article is quick to note the BC United released a statement saying there are concerns around private property and Crown land, and that there was a lot of condemnation of that "misleading and factually incorrect" statement as it was called by the First Nations Leadership Council. However, no news article on the issue actually links to the BC United statement, and their website does not have it, which counts as missing context on an unprecedented story.
The statement reads: “By advancing an agreement that stretches beyond the constitution and established legal precedents, this government is fostering a climate of uncertainty that will deter investment and destabilize the land base across our province. The NDP’s approach, shrouded in secrecy and lacking broad public consultation, is not in keeping with the spirit of reconciliation or the public interest, which demands open, honest dialogue and a commitment to finding solutions that respect the interests of all parties involved.”
Minister of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Murray Rankin said: "We believe that private property is 100 per cent protected and will always be, going forward, protected. Haida [Nation] will have more say over land-use decisions because of the existence of Aboriginal title on what we call Crown land."
Still, the draft agreement says free simple interests — such as private property — will not be infringed and will remain under the jurisdiction of the provincial government: “Recognizing Aboriginal title will not impact anyone’s private property, or local government jurisdiction and bylaws on Haida Gwaii. Highways, airports, ferry terminals, health care and schools will not be impacted. Residents will continue to receive municipal services and pay property taxes in the same way they do today.”
But the question still remains about jurisdiction. It's something the BC NDP have struggled with this year already, as their proposed changes to the B.C. Land Act — which the province said were designed to align with UNDRIP — were paused in February after sharp criticism from BC United, and the public.
There are concerns over how title would coexist with private property. A legal team specializing in an Aboriginal law at Cassels law firm is raising concerns about the agreement, however, saying Aboriginal title, being communal, is intrinsically incompatible with private fee simple holdings, and they say the agreement could create “considerable uncertainty” for forestry and mining operations that require long-term use of Crown land for their operations.
In a legal analysis of the agreement, the firm says: “This announcement raises significant questions about the implications of acknowledging Aboriginal title in a contract versus a treaty or land claim agreement. It also raises concerns regarding the legal consequences of recognizing Aboriginal title over privately owned fee simple lands, and the effects of such a recognition on the property rights and economic interests of private parties.”
Haida Gwaii has a population of about 5,000, about half of whom are Haida. About 44 per cent of Haida Gwaii is Crown forest, and 35 percent of that is considered timber harvesting land base – about 155,493 hectares – according to the chief forester’s office. So 15 percent of Haida Gwaii is working forest under some form of Crown tenure. The government said that, until jurisdiction is transferred to the Haida, decisions on permitting and leases on Crown land will continue to be made by the provincial government.
But in its analysis, Cassels suggests that Aboriginal title and private, fee simple land are incompatible: “It is unclear whether the province has contemplated the impact that recognizing Aboriginal title, through the agreement, will have on private property interests and existing interests in Crown land. The province has fashioned a version of Aboriginal title which is unknown at law, creates considerable uncertainty, and does not promote the reconciliation of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal interests inherent in section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982.”
Still, it's far better to negotiate terms and exceptions than it is for an unelected court to unilaterally decide something in a decision that might not be preferable to anyone. We'll have to see how the government and the Haida nation proceed with this agreement and if it does indeed smooth things over, or if it just raises more questions than before.
Supplementals:

A third of Canadian gig workers are willing to commit tax fraud to keep their income, new survey finds

There was a new study done recently that says that a third of Canadian gig workers are willing to commit tax fraud to keep more of their money.
First of all, what is a gig worker?
A gig worker is best thought of as someone like an independent contractor or online worker that works with companies and individuals on a one-to-one basis to provide a service.
Workers that fit into this camp include things like Uber drivers, Skip drivers or independent tech contractors in the software and video industry.
In Canada upwards of a million people rely on gig work as their main source of income.
The study done by H&R Block says that because of the tax situation, 32% of people were willing to risk not declaring their income.
The study suggests that filing taxes as a gig worker is too complex and many people who don’t file don’t understand the ramifications of not filing their taxes properly.
People not filing are risking a fee of $100 or 50% of the understated tax.
Gig workers need to file taxes on all self-employment income. They also need to collect and send the GST and HST to the Canada Revenue Agency. Though that requirement doesn’t kick in until upwards of $30,000 is earned and for rideshare drivers, they need to send the GST or HST before they even begin driving.
It has been said that being part of society involves being a good citizen and paying the taxes requested but we also need to ask the question, are the taxes fair? And is the process made easy enough to file?
There are reasons that around this time of year tax servicing agencies pop up to aid people in filing taxes for a modest fee of a portion of their rebate.
In an ideal world there would be a simple setup for the tax brackets in this country and a simple way of filing taxes.
Imagine a situation where to file taxes all you would need to do is file your employer, amount earned, and tax number and send it away on a piece of paper the size of a postcard.
We also need to realize that delivery company drivers and ride share drivers count as part of the gig economy.
When pairing this with data available we also know that a large portion of these drivers are also new immigrants to Canada.
With that we must ask whether or not the fact that nearly 60% of new immigrants according to the December 2023 Statistics Canada labour force survey were delivery drivers or gig workers, we need to ask if this is playing a role in the response to the H&R block study.
This story was initially published in the Toronto Star but no further analysis was done as to what the cause might actually be.
The upshot on all of this is that while this looks like a problem in the gig workforce and the tax filing system and brackets in Canada, it could also be a problem that is being caused by our ballooning immigration numbers in Canada.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Ottawa has already spent $42M on a Liberal gun 'buyback' that still doesn't exist

Let's take a trip back in time to roughly 4 years ago. No, we're not going to talk about the dreaded C word disease, although that does provide the backdrop for this particular signature policy from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It's May 1st 2020, and while many people at the time were worried about making their livelihoods with restrictions in place, or the health of themselves and their families, the Liberal government put their fingers on the pulse of Canadians and found something that everyone was talking about. No, it wasn't the environment, immigration, job security, housing, or inflation. Those were all problems for a future Trudeau.
Yes, at the time when people were going out to Costco and buying up toilet paper by the truckload, or when many got laid off or had to work from home, small businesses and restaurants went bankrupt, and the entire economic system was turned on its head.
Instead of focusing on Canadian problems, something that would plague a future Trudeau 4 years later, the Liberals of the time used the chaos of the confusion that was the pandemic in order to enact something that to this day remains controversial for how it was enacted, what it proposed to do, and to what extent it would solve the problem the Liberals intended it to.
Yes, the Liberal fingers were on the pulse of Canada in May 2020, much like how just a few weeks later a Minneapolis police officer's knee was on the neck of George Floyd. That is to say, Trudeau meted out a very controversial final decision on a problem that required a different solution altogether.
The problem that the Liberals decided to tackle on that Friday afternoon in May, throwing the trajectory of Western Context episode 167 onto a different path, was in response to the horrific mass shooting in Nova Scotia just a week and a half earlier. That event, which of course brought the RCMP into disrepute for their mishandling of the suspect, who was known to police and was later found to have illegally acquired all 5 guns used, that the guns were previously reported to the RCMP already, and was known to dress up in RCMP gear, showed that something clearly needed to be done to make it so that such an event could never happen again.
Was it a reformation of the RCMP in light that they should have done something about the suspect earlier? No. Was it a better system to warn the public in the event of emergencies, at least a better system than relying on officer discretion to use Twitter instead of the emergency alert system? No. Was it better protecting our southern border to stop illegals, i mean, illegal guns coming in? Of course not!
Trudeau's response to the mass shooting, something that's actually very rare in Canada, rather than focusing on all the failures that led to the tragic ending of 23 lives, was to instead do something that would not have prevented the shooting if it was in place prior to it.
On May 1st 2020, Trudeau announced that the sale, transportation, importation, or use of so- called "assault-style" firearms in Canada was now banned effective immediately. Via the supremely undemocratic Order in Council method that bypassed Parliament, the government re-classified them as "Prohibited" under the Firearms Act, with a two-year amnesty period to allow current owners to dispose, export, register, or sell them (under a buy-back scheme), and for special uses. The prohibition applied to at least 1,500 models and variants, largely semi-automatic firearms, but also peculiarly including things like grenade launchers and anti tank weaponry.
Internal government documents from 2019 put the cost of a government mandatory gun buyback at nearly $2 billion, despite assurances during the last federal election in 2021 that expropriating so-called “assault style” weapons from licensed Canadian firearms owners would only cost between $400 million and $600 million.
And here's where we get to the new news on this story: Four years after the Trudeau Liberals announced sweeping changes to Canada’s gun laws, the government has so far already spent $42 million on the confiscation program that doesn’t even yet exist.
In a response to an order paper question filed by Sen. Don Plett in September, Public Safety Canada revealed that $41,904,556 has been spent so far on the government’s “firearms buyback program,” and that 60 department employees are working on the project.
Plett said Friday during the Senate question period, directing his question at government representative Sen. Marc Gold: “This is a boondoggle, and it hasn’t even begun. How can your government have spent $42 million on this, when not a single firearm has been bought back?”
As well, the documents reveal that IBM has been awarded a $2.27-million contract to develop, design and implement the program. That figure is nearly double what that contract was worth when Public Safety Canada announced the firm’s involvement in the program in 2020.
In the documents, the RCMP say it is managing a team of 15 full-time employees devoted to the gun grab. As well, Service Canada has assigned two employees to the program, and a response from Public Services and Procurement Canada, in what can only be described as the epitome of government speak, said it has devoted “the equivalent of 5.825 full-time employees” to the project.
Last April, the federal government commenced the first phase of the program by entering into a $700,000 agreement with the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association to confiscate so-called “assault rifles” from retailers. That program is expected to start later this year.
Wes Winkel, president of the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA), in a Jan 15 interview with The Hill Times said that “I don't believe anybody in the country has the ability to carry out such a massive endeavour, which is why the government, I believe, has pushed off the date for collection to pass the next federal election. I do not believe that there is even the infancy stages of an individual program put together."
Ironically, that statement is true, even considering last week's story where the Liberals decided to postpone the fixed election date by a week, changing the election from October 20th to 27th 2025. Initially meant to happen by April 2022, amnesty for licensed owners was extended until Oct. 23, 2023, and again until 2025. That actually is a big deal for the gun buyback program, because while it has already been delayed twice, the latest delay in the time frame meant that the Amnesty Order, ensuring that affected firearm owners and businesses are protected from criminal liability for unlawful possession while they come into compliance with the law, including having the opportunity to take part in the buyback program, is set to expire on October 30th 2025. How convenient.
J.L. Gilles LeVasseur, a professor of management and law at the University of Ottawa who has also served as an in the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Canadian Armed Forces, and managed public-and private-sector projects, said the challenge with the roll-out is that Public Safety does not have the infrastructure or the personnel to execute the buyback program rapidly.
He said: “The government has to rely on the private sector and qualified businesses to do the work. The PSPC is not organized in that capacity; they are not built for this kind of job, and they just don't have the infrastructure. You have to use the established institutions to do the work to support the government.”
This means the government will be inflating the cost of the program to contract out the work to private companies to get the buybacks rolling.
Work on phase two, which involves confiscating legally purchased firearms from their licensed owners, began earlier this year. The government issued an invitation to qualify earlier this year, seeking vendors interested in collecting and destroying the over 1,500 gun models summarily banned by the federal government under the May 1, 2020 order-in-council.
The government estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 newly prohibited firearms are in the hands of Canadian businesses, and anywhere between 125,000 to 200,000 are owned by licensed individuals. As many gun crimes are committed with prohibited firearms smuggled into Canada from the United States — and therefore unlawful for Canadian licence-holders to own — critics say the government is preoccupying itself with an expensive program whose impact on Canada’s crime epidemic will be negligible. Where have we seen this before, the Canadian government engaged with an expensive solution to an invented problem?
Simon Fraser University Prof. Gary Mauser, who ironically shares his last name with a line of German bolt action rifles and handguns, mused that nearly $42 million is a lot of money to spend for what he said amounts to “grandstanding” by the federal government.
Mauser says the government should be well aware that confiscating hundreds of thousands of firearms would be prohibitively expensive, and are hesitant to publicly reveal the program’s true costs.
“Telling the truth would destroy their narrative. Ottawa is not having much success with their efforts on this file. Ontario has refused to co-operate with future confiscations. Saskatchewan has asked to join the appeal. Requests for co-operating organizations have fallen flat.”
Mauser says the fact that the now-banned guns sat safely with their owners without incident for the past four years suggests the 2020 bans — enacted after the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia — were introduced for reasons other than just public safety.
Absolutely. Mass shootings in Canada are few and far between, compared to our neighbour to the south, due to our already sensible gun laws before Trudeau, as well as a healthy gun culture amongst legal gun owners. Where the crime takes place is from the illegal guns coming in from the US, which Trudeau has never addressed.
Tracey Wilson, spokesperson for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CFFR), told National Post that skyrocketing costs so far don’t bode well for the program’s future.
She said: “Not only has not a single firearm been confiscated, the program itself doesn’t even exist — not even for willing retailers anxious to off-load unsellable inventory. The whole premise of the 2020 gun ban was that these firearms, previously approved for sporting and hunting purposes by the RCMP lab, were simply too dangerous to own. Yet four years later, they are all exactly where they’ve been for decades, if not generations — in the gun safes of licensed, RCMP-vetted gun owners.”
It takes a special kind of incompetence to spend four years and $42 million on a government priority and accomplish absolutely nothing. This plan from Trudeau, to ban the 1,500 rifle variants, was always about politics and not results. Four years later, we have the proof, plenty of money spent, lots of heated rhetoric, no results.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“Not only has not a single firearm been confiscated, the program itself doesn’t even exist — not even for willing retailers anxious to off-load unsellable inventory. The whole premise of the 2020 gun ban was that these firearms, previously approved for sporting and hunting purposes by the RCMP lab, were simply too dangerous to own. Yet four years later, they are all exactly where they’ve been for decades, if not generations — in the gun safes of licensed, RCMP-vetted gun owners.” - Tracey Wilson, spokesperson for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights on the Liberals’ stalled gun buyback

Word of the Week

Boondoggle - work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value

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Show Data

Episode Title: Buyback Boondoggle

Teaser: Canada refuses to sell LNG to another NATO ally, BC’s Haida Nation will have title over all of Haida Gwaii, and a third of gig workers would consider tax fraud. Also, $42m has been spent on Trudeau’s nonexistent gun buyback.

Recorded Date: March 30, 2024

Release Date: March 31 2024

Duration: 58:17

Edit Notes: Crime guns

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:XX