In 2019, Catherine McKenna declared a climate emergency. In a recent Nate Erskine-Smith interview with McKenna, about her new book “Run Like a Girl,” he has a telling sentence that certainly most Western Canadians will “get it in their guts.” At about 30 minutes into the interview, Erskine-Smith recounts several of McKenna’s initiatives, noting that the carbon tax gets the most attention, but she is also responsible for imposing stringent methane rules on agriculture and industry, the Clean Electricity Standard, and the industrial carbon price. BTW, she also introduced the “no more pipelines” Bill C-69 in 2018.All of these are job and investment killers. As much as she denounced the Conservative Party’s position that the carbon tax is a “tax on everything,” it turns out it is! Economist Trevor Tombe showed that nearly the full value of the price drop of the carbon tax zeroing was passed on to consumers..CLARK: Who’s really running your town?.McKenna is obviously a very hard-working, talented, and capable person. Her book offers an inspirational and practical handbook for any person interested in being in politics or knowing more about how things work. McKenna was subjected to horrific, misogynist abuse during her time in office. And she hated the moniker “Climate Barbie.”She makes much of the fact that Gerry Ritz, then Conservative Opposition Critic on International Trade, tweeted, in response to a headline that “No major advanced industrialized economy is currently on pace to meeting its Paris commitments … Has anyone told our Climate Barbie?” Crass as this may seem, “Farmer Gerry” could see the devastation McKenna’s climate policies were wreaking on Canada’s essential industries of agriculture, oil and gas, and the oil sands..It wasn’t a man thing, though. “Climate Barbie” was first coined by Rebel Media’s Sheila Gunn Reid. Most people who are not following the climate cult closely will not know that many climate activists happily identify as “Climate” NAME … like “Climate Bill” McKibben (founder of 350.org), “Climate George” Marshall (Climate Outreach, UK), “Climate Human” Peter Kalmus, (NASA climate scientist), and even one of McKenna’s best climate pals is “Climate Morgan” — Jennifer Morgan, who was former Executive Director of Greenpeace, was subsequently appointed Germany's first-ever Special Envoy for International Climate Action in 2022.While the changing out of what would have been “Climate Cathy” to “Barbie” is kind of humiliating, with her blond locks flowing in the wind, McKenna’s incessant posting of herself riding a bike to work in high heels made it a natural..HORTON: Exiling Jordan Peterson is a Canadian failure of conscience.Further, as people like “Oil Wife Sheila” watched Alberta’s oil patch and oil sands industry implode, thanks to McKenna’s climate policies, the moniker was mild, compared to the human carnage on the ground. Bankruptcies, divorce, and suicide rocked the West as climate carnage policies trundled on, under McKenna’s direction. While the abuse she received was wrong, worse was her lack of due diligence on the impact of her climate ideological policies for Canadians.Would she ever listen to globally recognized energy expert Canadian Vaclav Smil, on how Net Zero is unattainable? Or to Canadian economist Ross McKitrick, on how after spending trillions of dollars we might reduce global warming by 0.007 degrees Celsius by 2100? He called Net Zero 2050 “Darkness at the End of the Tunnel.”.Or would that be too much “mansplaining” for her?In her book, she says that when Donald Trump was elected in 2016, a year after the Paris Agreement, the following year in 2017, she created a new group to circumvent the United States departure from the Paris Agreement and wait out his four-year term. .OLDCORN: Ottawa shouldn’t ask the Supreme Court to rewrite the notwithstanding clause.I wonder, today, how that has affected our trade relationship with the US, our largest trading partner?McKenna’s Chief of Staff was Marlo Raynolds, whom she tells us was appointed for her by Gerry Butts. She did not even know what the name of the Paris “COP21” Conference meant — “Conference of the Parties.” One must then ask where did her radical policies come from?.In 2009, while Raynolds was with Pembina Institute, he had put together the under-the-radar “Strathmere Alliance” of the top ~14 environmental groups in Canada to meet, pow-wow, and campaign strategically together. Parker Gallant has written endless blog posts about this influential group.Most of the Strathmere Alliance members are mentioned as partners in the Tar Sands Campaign that no one talks about anymore. .GOLDBERG: Ford’s solution to everything is deflect and blame someone else.McKenna explains how she went on to be appointed to the UN High Level Expert Group on Net Zero, issuing a report called “Integrity Matters,” which advocates for draconian mandatory emissions reporting and verification; no more greenwashing on Net Zero claims. Again, no due diligence was done. Simon Michaux, professor and mining engineer, another man, has shown that there is no material supply chain to meet Net Zero. The most recent Statistical Review of World Energy shows that global energy demand for energy of all forms continues to rise. The most recent US Department of Energy climate report shows there is no climate emergency. North American efforts to reduce emissions will have no impact, other than handing the competitive advantage to China and India..McKenna has reinvented herself as an entrepreneur. She is now positioned to cash in on those years of developing nature-based climate solutions policies through her company, Climate & Nature Solutions, via Article 6, international carbon trading, which, in her book, she touts as an achievement of her Canadian team at the Paris Agreement in 2015. Carbon accounting is known as the “Mother of all Enron’s” by energy analyst Anas Alhaji.One of McKenna’s themes in her book is #AddWomenChangePolitics. I would hope we’d “add due diligence” for all politicians. That would really change politics and our economy.Canada’s economy is now on life support, largely due to a decade of climate policies that began with McKenna’s climate zealotry, much like that of her climate activist group, Women Leading on Climate. Leading us off a cliff.
