A Canadian socialist MP just expressed bewilderment that the Competition Bureau refused to say the government couldn’t fib about the environment. But if you really expect the custodians to guard themselves on issues, and especially on truth, and guard us into the bargain, you really shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power. The MP in question is Don Davies, parliamentary leader of Canada’s NDP, which stands for New Democratic Party because they were founded in the early 1960s when orange and brown seemed like good theme colours. But now the NDP is all green and like alarmists everywhere they want censorship laws, lots of them, assuming they will only be used by the state against enemies of the revolution. Imagine their surprise to find that the state is not pure.

Which it’s not. Indeed they are of course lying constantly. As Blacklock’s Reporter reports:

“The Competition Bureau has dropped any investigation into whether cabinet breached its own law against false advertising.… Parliament in 2024 amended the law [the Competition Act] to ban so-called greenwashing or any ‘statement, warranty or guarantee of a product’s benefits for protecting the environment or mitigating the environmental and ecological effects of climate change that is not based on an adequate and proper test, the proof of which lies on the person making the representation.’ ‘Private companies must follow Canada’s laws against deceptive environmental claims but the federal government does not,’ MP Davies said in a statement. ‘That is an absurd double standard.’… Cabinet in national TV ads promoting its programs stated in part: ‘As the world races to clean energy, Canada’s government will use our natural advantage to build world-class energy projects that bring down costs, create thousands of new jobs and lower emissions. We’ll build a cleaner future in the way that only Canada can.’ The ‘lower emissions’ claim is false. ‘The changes we have made will mean our emissions will be higher in the next few years than they were projected to be under the previous government’s plan,’ Prime Minister Mark Carney said June 30.”

Even that “next few years” is of course a falsehood. They lie a lot. However we do agree with the NDP that the law sets up an absurd double standard, reminding us of the old joke that if the left didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all. Also as per Henry Kissinger’s jibe that “ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation”, because that profession has been infamous for its dishonesty even by the sad standards of humanity since long before the invention of the press release. Yet somehow they think it’s their stinking opponents who are known to be untruthful.

Thus, predictably, The Australian reports that their federal Department of Climate Change and Energy (yes, pick one) “has launched a cross-agency working group to fight back against ‘climate misinformation’ it claims is thwarting the nation’s troubled green energy transition, as the Climate Change Authority led by Matt Kean stands accused of colluding with activists on a ‘stealth carbon tax’.”

So now it’s the Ministry of Climate Change, Energy and Truth. And thus a paper from the Climate Change Authority “identified ‘common narratives’ fuelling ‘uncertainty about climate policies, technologies and solutions’. These included misinformation narratives linked to ‘cost-of-living, energy prices and reliability, jobs, regional impacts, biodiversity and environmental impacts, whether Australia’s action matters’.” Misinformation narratives meaning people noticing stuff politicians are too dogmatic to notice or too slimy to admit.

The gall of politicians is astounding. So when the Guardian tells you the British government has put a saucepan on its head and started burying buses to live in you are entitled to chortle. OK, what they actually said was “UK to warn citizens to stock up on food amid threat from climate crisis and hostile states”. And in point of fact being prepared to weather shortages, including of potable water if the network breaks down, is very good advice, especially since it’s the government in charge of making sure it doesn’t. In consequence “Last week hackers linked to Iran were blamed for a cyber-attack that caused a British power plant to be temporarily shut down.”

It’s also an insult when the UK Cabinet Office intones “We’re committed to raising awareness of simple steps households can take to make themselves more resilient” as if we were such dumbos, there and here, that we didn’t know to have some tinned food on hand because it keeps and can be eaten without heating or adding water. The entity least likely to be aware even of simple things, including “live within your means” and “China is not our friend” is, yes indeed, the government.

Thus, for instance, the Canadian government actually spent $100,000, peanuts to them but not to those who paid it in taxes from the sweat of their brow, to ask us how we got fresh air into the home. Apparently they needed to be told the answer, which was… yes, you guessed it. “Open a window.” D’oh.

To be fair even to it, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry when the Guardian adds that:

“The government was criticised, however, for its decision to send an emergency phone alert warning of wildfires last week, which charities and domestic abuse survivors said risked the safety of people who might be hiding secret phones.”

By that reasoning you should never send an alert, and if people get burned up or drowned well it was for their own protection. Is that the actual Guardian position, or is it just babbling vacuously? Or both, we suppose.

The bottom line is that if anyone should not be in charge of policing truth it’s the police. We won’t rehash the entire argument against censorship here but it is surely conclusive both theoretically and in light of historical practice. But we will note that the Canadian government promised years ago to plant two billion trees, which ought not to have been a challenge in a nation that spans a continent and is full of forests. And when it bungled the task it denied having done so.

In response to the latest spasm of spin, Blacklock’s Reporter alerts us that it actually cost nearly half a billion dollars to plant 228 million trees but alas “Official figures counted millions of saplings scheduled for planting in national parks that were not actually planted.” When is a tree not a tree? When the government says it is one.

Also, bureaucrats were paid millions to fail to get anywhere near the target. And so:

“‘The government remains committed to sustainable forest management,’ said a Department of Natural Resources briefing note. ‘The program made strong progress,’ it added.”

Once again they said the thing that is not. Nobody should give them the power to correct “misinformation” because they are masters of the stuff themselves.