Leftist censorship campaigns have been racking up the wins, but mark one down for the good guys. Their latest censorship attack wildly backfired in the birthplace of Canadian socialism: Regina, Saskatchewan. .Patrick Moore was invited, then disinvited to a City of Regina conference. The end result is that he will overshadow that event by speaking just before it happens, and to far more people than he would have otherwise. And the local far-left newspaper hates it..The City of Regina wants its facilities and operations to be 100 per cent renewable by 2050. To educate and inspire the public towards that goal, the city scheduled a Reimagine Regina Conference for May 20-21 of this year. Patrick Moore was invited to speak..The last time I had heard Moore’s name mentioned in Regina was over ten years ago when a visiting David Suzuki called him, “the Judas of the environmental movement.” Moore joined Greenpeace in 1971, a year after it was founded, and became its the president in 1977. But he left Greenpeace because he felt it “took a sharp turn to the political left” and “evolved into an organization of extremism and politically motivated agendas.”.Following the announcement that Moore himself was coming to Regina, those left-leaning, politically-motivated environmentalists lit their hair on fire. They took to social media and sent angry messages to city hall, protesting Moore’s prominent place in the schedule..The complainers weren’t enough to change minds at city hall, at least not at first. At a January 31st press conference, Regina Councillor Mike O’Donnell told the media, “One of the things we’re aware of is he would probably create some interest. And he has. You’re here today.”.Of course, cancel culture doesn’t give up easily. It came to light that Moore’s talk would be titled “Fake, Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom.” Of course, that perspective undermines the very premise upon which the city’s direction was based. If man-made, carbon-driven global warming was not an imminent, apocalyptic threat, then Regina did not need to be “reimagined.” The same old fossil fuels could power it for the foreseeable future..Moore had his supporters too, and the furor overshadowed the conference. As a result, Mayor Michael Fougere urged organizers to reconsider Moore’s engagement. On February 7, Councillor O’Donnell, who co-chairs the committee responsible for the event, held another press conference to say Moore was out..“The conference topic we suggested to [Moore] was a sustainable energy future. He had done some work previously and presented previously on the transition away from traditional fossil fuels to an alternate. That’s what we wanted to pick up on. He has now announced in the last while that he wants to speak about a different topic. We’re not interested in that.”.For his part, Moore tweeted a response that was later slamming the City of Regina and the activists behind his cancelation..Moore’s snub was not a failure, but a back door to greater success. Like a rubber ball thrown hard to the ground only to bounce up with equal force, the series of events only brought more attention to his message and ruined the city’s event. .Besides all of this, the city still has to pay Moore $10,000 for speaking fees and $1,400 for expenses he won’t occur. (The city is combing through clauses in the contract trying to get those fees reduced.).Meanwhile, the catastrophists remained sour at their civic overlords, and started to bash the conference itself. Prairie Dog, Regina’s far-left paper, dedicated an entire cover story to what it called “PatrickMooreGate.” Its subtitle asked, “Why on earth did Regina’s sustainability conference hire a climate-science denier?”.The paper said the controversy “was a lightning rod that jolted people who’d supported the Renewable City motion into wondering why the city is even hosting a regional conference in the first place.” They wanted action, not a conference..The paper then asked why oil executives were invited to the conference, and if the pricey $300 attendance fee was “a deliberate tactic to keep out the rabble-rousing public” and maintain the status quo. Sustainability groupies decided to ignore the conference and host their own events instead..To top this all off, Moore is coming to Regina anyway. Rebel Media booked him at the Conexus Arts Centre for the evening of May 19 – right before the two-day city conference begins. Whereas Moore would have been just one of three keynote speakers amongst a total 45 presenters, he will instead speak to thousands by himself. Tickets will range from a very accessible $25 to as much as $500 to include VIP events before and after the main address..Cancel culture has made a dog’s breakfast out of the Moore affair. They discredited the City of Regina’s event, made a mockery of themselves, and served to give an even larger platform to the target of their hate, hosted by Rebel Media, which they likely hate even more. .Lee Harding is the Saskatchewan Affairs Columnist for the Western Standard. He is also a Research Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and is the former Saskatchewan Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
