Mark Friesen

The exclusive priority of the government of Canada on the international scene should be to manage our relations with other countries in order to protect and further the interests of Canadians. Unfortunately, that’s not what’s happening.

There is a growing trend to dilute national sovereignty, and to favour increased international policy coordination as well as the redistribution of wealth from rich to poor countries under the supervision of the United Nations. This globalist vision has been heavily promoted in Canada under Justin Trudeau, who believes that we are a “post-national state” with “no core identity.”

Over the past several years, Canada has signed many UN treaties, accords and compacts on issues ranging from global warming to migration and sustainable development, that tie us to this corrosive globalist agenda.

Meanwhile, as our national debt continues to mount, the Liberal government devotes more and more resources trying to solve social and economic problems in other countries. It spends billions of dollars every year to help countries in Africa and Asia build roads, educate children, and reduce their CO2 emissions. It plans to spend $1.4 billion every year to offer abortion and reproductive health services to women in developing countries.

The United Nations is a dysfunctional organisation where non-democratic countries, because of their large numbers, have the most influence. This leads to ridiculous situations. For example, several of the member states on the UN Human Rights Council are among the worst human rights offenders in the world. As one country among almost 200, Canada has no interest in seeing the UN grow into a more powerful, quasi-world government.

There is no persuasive moral or economic efficiency argument for development aid. Countries that remain poor are those where governments are still crushing private initiative. Until they liberalize their economy and free their citizens, no amount of development aid will solve their problems. On the contrary, it creates a cycle of dependency and often helps these authoritarian governments stay in power.

Canada needs a common-sense foreign policy focused on the security and prosperity of Canadians, not an ideological approach that compromises our interests.

A People’s Party government will:

• Continue to work closely with our allies to maintain a peaceful international order, but will not get involved in foreign conflicts unless we have a compelling strategic interest in doing so.
• Prioritize relations with our main trading and defence partner, and work with the Trump administration, or whoever occupies the White House, to reinforce our friendship and cooperation.
• Withdraw from all UN commitments, including the Global Compact on Migrations and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, that threaten our sovereignty, and reduce our presence in UN institutions to a minimum.
• Liberalize trade with as many countries as possible, while ensuring our security and protecting our economy from the threat of potentially hostile foreign investors.
• Save billions of dollars by phasing out development aid, and focus Canadian international assistance exclusively on emergency humanitarian action in cases such as health crises, major conflicts and natural disasters.

The Liberal government is spending billions of dollars at home and abroad to fight global warming—or “climate change” as it is now called to account for every natural weather event and its opposite.

In order to lower greenhouse gas emissions, it has imposed taxes and countless regulations, it subsidizes inefficient and costly “green technology,” and it is blocking the development of oil resources crucial to our prosperity.

It is an undisputed fact that the world’s climate has always changed and will continue to change. Until twelve thousand years ago, much of Canada was under ice, and it is thanks to natural climate change that we can live here today.

There is however no scientific consensus on the theory that CO2 produced by human activity is causing dangerous global warming today or will in the future, and that the world is facing environmental catastrophes unless these emissions are drastically reduced. Many renowned scientists continue to challenge this theory.

The policy debate about global warming is not grounded on science anymore. It has been hijacked by proponents of big government who are using crude propaganda techniques to impose their views. They publicly ridicule and harass anyone who expresses doubt. They make exaggerated claims to scare people. They even manipulate school children, getting them to pressure their parents and to demonstrate in the streets.

Climate change alarmism is based on flawed models that have consistently failed at correctly predicting the future. None of the cataclysmic predictions that have been made about the climate since the 1970s have come true. No new ice age. No steady warming in direct relation with increases in CO2 levels. No disappearance of polar ice caps. No exceptional rise in ocean levels. No abnormal increase in catastrophic weather events. No widespread crop failure and famine.

In fact, CO2 is beneficial for agriculture and there has recently been a measurable “greening” of the world in part thanks to higher levels. Despite what global warming propaganda claims, CO2 is not a pollutant. It is an essential ingredient for life on Earth and needed for plant growth.

Given the uncertainties over the scientific basis of global warming, and the certainties about the huge costs of measures designed to fight it, there is no compelling reason to jeopardize our prosperity with more government interventions.  

A People’s Party government will:

• Withdraw from the Paris Accord and abandon unrealistic greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.
• Stop sending billions of dollars to developing countries to help them reduce their emissions.
• Abolish the Liberal government’s carbon tax and leave it to provincial governments to adopt programs to reduce emissions if they want to.
• Abolish subsidies for green technology and let private players develop profitable and efficient alternatives.
• Invest in mitigation strategies if problems arise as a result of any natural climate change.
• Prioritize implementing practical solutions to make Canada’s air, water and soil cleaner, including bringing clean drinking water to remote First Nations communities.

The rights of Canadians to freely hold and express beliefs are being eroded at an alarming speed under the Trudeau government. Some of its recent decisions even require that Canadians renounce their most deeply held moral convictions and express opinions they disagree with.

In 2018, the Liberal government denied summer job funding to organizations, including charities, that would not sign an attestation supporting abortion. It also passed bill C-16 as part of a trend to force Canadians to express support for the existence of various gender identities beyond the biological categories of male and female, and to use pronouns demanded by those who identify with these other genders.

In addition to these assaults on conscience, the government launched a series of regulatory attacks on free speech on the internet and is pressuring social media companies, which are already censoring speech that isn’t politically correct, to crack down even more. It is also considering bringing back Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act. This hate speech provision was repealed by the Conservative government in 2013 because it was being used arbitrarily to censor statements that offended some people on the internet.

In what appears to be a first step towards restricting our right to criticize some religions, it adopted M-103, a motion that condemns religious discrimination but only specifically mentions one religion, Islam, and without defining the term “islamophobia.”

Finally, on university campuses, a growing number of faculty and administrators—those who should be fighting for open debate of controversial ideas—have become aggressive advocates for censorship.

History and social scientific research show that freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, when maximally protected, advance the intellectual life of a nation, foster greater ideological diversity and societal understanding, and nurture other freedoms necessary for a successful democracy.

This is why Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees citizens freedom of conscience and religion, as well as freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.

What some people find politically incorrect, offensive or even hateful cannot serve as the legal basis for discrimination and censorship. Canadians should be able to enjoy maximum freedom of conscience and expression as guaranteed in Section 2 of the Charter.

A People’s Party Government will:

• Restrict the definition of hate speech in the Criminal Code to expression which explicitly advocates the use of force against identifiable groups or persons based on protected criteria such as religion, race, ethnicity, sex, or sexual orientation.
• Repeal any existing legislation or regulation curtailing free speech on the internet and prevent the reinstatement of section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
• Repeal C-16 and M-103.
• Ensure that Canadians can exercise their freedom of conscience to its fullest extent as it is intended under the Charter and are not discriminated against because of their moral convictions.
• Withhold federal funding from any post-secondary institution shown to be violating the freedom of expression of its students or faculty.