Like California, Canada has become a harbinger of bad political things to come. When truckers were protesting COVID lockdowns, the reaction of the Tredeau government was to lock down the bank accounts of the truckers. Denying them access to their own money.
Now the left wing New Democratic Party MP Charlie Angus has introduced a bill, C-372, that would outlaw telling the truth about fossil fuels if it differs from the government's preferred climate change narrative. The law would ostensibly outlaw marketing strategies, which in the government's view, trivialize alleged climate-altering emissions and health hazards caused by burning fossil fuels. It would be illegal to make the truthful statement, for instance, that burning natural gas produces less pollutants than burning coal. Penalties would be severe, up to a $1 million fine and two years in prison.
The precedent for this approach is 1970s legislation that ultimately banned tobacco advertising on broadcast media. That approach was a clear violation of the right to free speech then. And this legislation is a brazen violation of free speech once again.
In the 70s advertising that claimed one brand of cigarettes was safer than another may or may not have been true. In a civilized world those who disagreed with that claim would make a counter-argument. That's free speech. The ultimate result for those listening to those arguments would be, hey, maybe there is something to the argument that smoking is not a very healthy habit and maybe I should quit. Millions did. With very little credit going to the cessation of TV ads by the Marlboro Man.
The geologic record over millions of years is unequivocal. The climate changes. Glaciers once covered most of Minnesota including the farm where I grew up. Now they don't. They receded long before the industrial age increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Does carbon dioxide accelerate the process of climate change? I don't know. And neither do the so-called climate scientists with their faulty climate models that have been predicting disasters that should have already occurred. Multiple times. What is unequivocally true is that civilization as we know it could not have developed without the use of fossil fuels for heating our homes and powering our industry and transportation. It's still an open question whether solar and wind generated electricity can replace fossil fuels while maintaining our current level of economic progress and prosperity. But I doubt it.
In the court of public opinion, it's highly likely that the panic-mongering climate change partisans are in the process of losing the argument. Hence the need to control the narrative. If your narrative won't stand up to common sense and truth, those who believe in winning by any means necessary, will decide it is necessary to prevent the telling of truths that do not support their narrative. In a democracy, that means capturing control of the means of communicating to a larger audience including books, mass media and social media. The quickest way to do that is to capture control of the government and make it impossible for those who disagree with you to have a platform.
And that's why we have those who control the government in western democracies waging a war on malinformation. Malinformation is just truth that they don't want to hear and, for sure, don't want anyone else to hear.