My Open Letter to 105 Canadian Senators about Bill S-243 regarding the Climate-Aligned Finance Act

Commentary by Dan Fournier, published Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024, 14:30 EDT on fournier.substack.com

Senate Bill S-243 & My Open Letter to All Senators

Having come across Senate bill S-243, An Act to enact the Climate-Aligned Finance Act and to make related amendments to other Acts, I immediately noticed major areas of concern with its draft text. These are outlined and detailed in my seven-page Open Letter which is shown as images below in this section.

Having written a lot about climate change issues on my Substack, including a huge 300+ page series on geoengineering and weather modification in Canada (for which I also wrote open letters), the natural environment is something that concerns me.

Equally, if not more concerning, are policies, rules, regulations, and laws which have been enacted over the last several years which are lopsidedly in alignment with the prevailing climate change narrative and their resulting devastating effects on the Canadian economy and to citizens and residents of this great nation.

As such, I saw this as an opportunity to attempt to bring awareness to the issue by what I feel is my civic right and duty – to express my disagreement with what is sought in this radical bill which can result in, if it becomes law, devastating and irreversible consequences to the Canadian economy and the economic welfare of our nation’s citizens and residents.

Here is the contents of my Open Letter which was emailed on October 1, 2024 to all 105 Senators.

Why an Open Letter?

Many people have tried to convince me that it is pointless to write such kinds of articles to politicians.

I disagree.

In 2008, I left Canada even though I had a good job teaching business at a college in the province of Quebec.

I lived in China for 13 years until late 2021 when I found my way back to my cherished motherland.

Prior to my return I had never really been interested in Canadian politics. But upon my return, I saw that the Canada I had left behind all those years ago had, somehow, been transformed into an unrecognisable nation – at least from the free and strong standpoint for which I had always known of it.

That is why, in the fall of 2022 I decided to become an independent investigative journalist to try to find out what happened to Canada and see what I could do to help fix it.

Dan Fournier in the House of Commons building Committee Meeting Room, Ottawa. Photo taken on July 29, 2023.

In China, the average citizen is practically unable to express any kind of discontent towards their government, lest they become victims of the hard ruling fist of the state. I have witnessed this on multiple occasions while living there.

In Canada, we still have a democracy and democratic processes – even though these have been significantly deteriorating over the past few decades.

At least here, we are still free to exercise our God-given rights to freedom of speech and expression, conscience, freedom of assembly, and freedom the press, among other unalienable rights.

However, the 2022 Freedom Truckers Convoy certainly put these into question and has served as a turning/awakening point for many Canadians.

Nevertheless, I feel that Canada, unlike many other nations, still has the fundamental democratic underpinnings and institutions in place to function as a beacon of democracy.

But these can only be maintained with an engaged population; for without it, there will no longer be a mechanism to keep everything in check and hold our elected officials accountable to act in our best interest.

In recent years, the Canadian mainstream media has greatly failed us in this regard. They are no longer the Fourth-Estate that they are meant to be.

So, it is now up to us to serve that function.

Accordingly, this is my part in this democratic process to help hold our representatives in check.

Committee Meetings on Bill S-243

There have been six committee meetings thus far with regards to this bill.

During Committee Meeting 77 held on Wednesday, May 8, 2024, the principle Witness was Mark Carney, head of Chair of Brookfield Asset Management Inc.

Various senators asked Mr. Carney questions during this meeting. Senator Leo Housakos asked Mr. Carney whether he supported Justin Trudeau’s Carbon Tax – a tax that “that seven out of ten premiers and the vast majority of Canadians feel is pummelling the working class from coast to coast to coast,” he further highlighted.

Carney did not reply in the affirmative, but rather evaded providing an answer to the senator’s question.

A bit later during the meeting, Senator Yonah Martin repeated the question, asking whether Carney was for or against the carbon tax.

And, once more, Mark Carney did not answer the specific question.

One may find this strange that as the United Nations' special envoy on climate action and climate finance, one may be inclined to think that Carney would be steadfast in his convictions to support the Carbon Tax since it is purported to help alleviate the [alleged detrimental] effects of climate change.

Moreover, Carney has previously advocated for the creation of Carbon Markets during the Davos 2021 World Economic Forum agenda.

As per news from today, October 1, 2024, there are additional concerns that have surfaced regarding Mark Carney’s new role as chair of the Prime Minister’s special new task force on economic growth.

Specific to these concerns involved that of personal conflicts of interests Mr. Carney may have as well as transparency concerns.

The National Post article titled The 'task force' Mark Carney was hired to lead has no members but him cites specific concerns [with emphasis added]:

“The Conservative party said Carney’s appointment creates myriad conflicts of interest that are being shielded because he is working for the party and not the government.

“Even though Carney now has significant power within the Trudeau Government, he will not have to declare his massive conflicts of interest and connections to multinational corporate interests because Justin Trudeau has shielded him from ethics laws by hiring him as a Liberal Party advisor,” the Conservative party said in a statement. “Carney and his corporate friends stand to potentially benefit to the tune of billions of dollars with no accountability to Canadians.””

[2024-10-02 addition - start] It should also be stressed that, according to a September 19 article by the National Post, Mark Carney’s Brookfield Asset Management firm is soliciting a $50 billion pooled pension fund that would be seeded by as much as $10 billion in federal dollars.

As such, the potential for profiteering from such an arrangement with Carney’s Brookfield Asset Management firm would inevitably pose as a flagrant personal conflict of interest since he serves as special advisor to the Trudeau government via the Liberal Party.

Moreover, the Post article further demonstrates how Carney might actually be shielded given the way he was appointed as special advisor [with emphasis added]:

On Sept. 9, Carney was appointed as a senior economic advisor to the prime minister, and put in charge of a task force on economic growth. However, Carney will be employed by the Liberal Party of Canada rather than a public body like the Prime Minister’s Office.

This will have the effect of insulating Carney from the usual ethical disclosures and conflict-of-interest rules that would follow a senior government staffer on the public payroll.

As can be seen from the excerpt above, Carney would be insulated from the usual ethical and conflict-of-interest disclosure rules.

[2024-10-02 addition - end]

In the current political climate in which $5 billion has already been funnelled by Trudeau’s Liberal Government to the United Nations’ Global Digital Compact, along with another recent scandal involving the SDTC which points to hundreds of millions of dollars being squandered amidst apparent conflicts of interests, Canadians are understandably ever more questioning about where their taxpayer money goes to and how much transparency and oversight should be had with regards to these funds.

What can you do?

The first thing is to inform yourself. Read my Open Letter to learn about the facts of this particular bill.

You can telephone, write, or email a senator from your province to share with them your concerns about this (or other) bills that are currently under consideration.

If We the People do not communicate our concerns to our MPs and Senators – the only ones who have the privilege to introduce and enact laws in this country – then we risk living with the consequences of such ill-conceived and written bills which will inevitably cause further damage to the overall Canadian economy and to our own livelihoods.

I thus encourage you to participate in our democratic process before that itself becomes something akin to what exists in China and other dictatorships.

Thank you.

The author with his son in front of the Office of the Prime Minister and Privy Council in Ottawa in July of 2023.

Disclaimer:

See the author’s About page for full disclaimer.