Viva 'Progressive' Canada!

"The federal government must recognize the exclusive role provinces and territories have over the management of our non-renewable natural resource development or risk creating a Constitutional crisis."
"[Bill C-48 in particular] will have detrimental effects on national unity."
"Bill C-69, as originally drafted, would make it virtually impossible to develop critical infrastructure, depriving Canada of much-needed investment."
"Our [provincial] governments are deeply concerned with the federal government’s disregard, so far, of the concerns raised by our provinces related to these bills. As it stands, the federal government appears indifferent to the economic hardships faced by provinces."
"Immediate action to refine or eliminate these bills is needed to avoid further alienating provinces and their citizens and focus on uniting the country in support of Canada’s economic prosperity."

"Our five provinces and territory stand united and strongly urge the government to accept Bill C-69 as amended by the Senate, in order to minimize the damage to the Canadian economy."
"We would encourage the government of Canada and all members of the House of Commons to accept the full slate of amendments to the bill."

Premiers Doug Ford (Ontario), Blaine Higgs (New Brunswick), Brian Pallister (Manitoba), Scott Moe (Saskatchewan), Jason Kenney (Alberta), Robert McLeod (Northwest Territories)

"I think it's absolutely irresponsible for conservative premiers to be threatening our national unity if they don't get their way." 
"The fundamental job of any Canadian prime minister is to hold this country together."
"Anyone who wants to be prime minister, like Andrew Scheer [leader of the Conservative official opposition], needs to condemn those attacks on national unity."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

"Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has no one to blame but himself for the current strains on national unity."
"He has claimed the fundamental responsibility of any Prime Minister is to bring the country together yet his actions point to the contrary."
"He’s pushing legislation widely criticized by most provinces, industry groups, prospective investors in Canada and Indigenous leaders as clear violation of provincial jurisdiction and a profound threat to [the] future of natural resource development, economic growth and prosperity in our country."
"His government’s legislative actions have caused more division in Canada than we have seen for years, and today’s comments only further inflame those tensions."
Jason Kenny, Premier, Alberta 

The Hibernia platform in Newfoundland's offshore is one of the province's offshore facilities. (HMDC)

Well, actually, it's not just Conservative premiers -- who represent over fifty percent of all Canadians -- and whose provinces' natural resources have buoyed the Canadian economy since Confederation that have run afoul of the federal Liberal government's action plan on the environment clashing head on with resource development, since signatories to a previous letter sent to Trudeau were former Liberal premier Rachel Notley, and leader of the Alberta Liberals, David Khan. Furthermore, an Angus Reid poll found 50 percent of Albertans are so enraged over the federal government's stance on resource development in the oilfields they would support secession.

In Saskatchewan, over half the population would consider secession, according to an Environics poll, reflecting the evisceration of both provinces' plans for petroleum resource development that have gone awry as international investment has dried up in response to the federal government's slow and steady withdrawal from support of the oil industry, not to mention its deep-sixing of critical oil pipelines to deepwater ports for export abroad, preferentially leaving Canada's huge oil deposits untouched, a gift to strident environmentalists who prefer it that way.

A sign is located near a Trident Exploration natural gas well near the community of Didsbury, Alta. Trident blamed low commodity prices and a lack of export pipeline capacity, among other reasons, for shutting down this week. (Kyle Bakx/CBC)

The wealth generated to date by the oil and gas industries in Canadian provinces, including Newfoundland and Labrador, and particularly Alberta for many decades in tax transfers to the federal government paid the lion's share of 'equalization payments' to Canada's so-called 'have-not' provinces to ensure that all provinces in Canada would be able to offer equal services to all Canadians no matter where they live. With the Liberal government's steady encroachment on the Alberta government's responsibility for its natural resources, and its continual imposition of new environmental bills effectively halting extraction and pipeline activities, employment has plummeted and revenues along with it.

Lacking efficient export capabilities leaving Alberta to the use of trains to transport fuel to market rather than pipeline transfer, has made the province vulnerable to accepting pricing well below market value, a huge loss both for the province and for federal coffers for a government which has been profligate in other measures of spending for social welfare programs. Much like Quebec which has ever since equalization payments have been handed out, receiving the largest percentage of transfer payments to any province, enabling it to provide social programs far in excess of its own prosperity level.

Little wonder the petroleum product provinces are up in arms over the injustices they are now undergoing at the hands of the federal government. Justin Trudeau's agenda has been underhandedly undertaken, and it has impoverished the provinces that have been the engines of economic growth for the nation. He has alienated western populations by ignoring the needs of their provincial governments and putting huge numbers of people employed in the petroleum industry out of work. He is single-handedly managing to reverse the prosperity that Canada's potential promises.

And he has the unmitigated gall to charge those provinces' leaders with harming Canada's interests, with injuring national unity. We have this Liberal government to thank for social-improvement projects so dear to 'progressives' where euthanasia is now legal in Canada, as is the gateway drug to harder drug consumption at a time when the country is reeling under the ubiquity of overdose deaths, and where divisions have taken place in society over the narcissistic 'feminist' imperatives of Justin Trudeau.

A government which hands out millions in tax dollars to Islamist jihadis, and grants citizenship to convicted terrorists, while refusing summer employment funding to any organizations failing to unreservedly support abortion with no restrictions, and penalizing those in academia who refuse to use gender-neutral language in reference to LGBTQ2 demands. More, much more, all of it headache-inducing and heart-breaking for a unified Canada.

Child Marriage Hypocrisy in Canada

"There's been absolutely no reflection on the fact that it [child marriage] remains legal in Canada."
"[Child marriage in Canada] is legal and ongoing. [Research results probably] underestimate the true extent of the practice."
"Child marriage is associated with poor health and economic outcomes, particularly for girls."
Alissa Koski, assistant professor, Department of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health, McGill University

"Canada has committed to eliminate child, early and forced marriage by 2030 in line with target 5.3 of the Sustainable Development Goals."
"Canada reported on progress made against target 5.3 including some of the foreign aid the government has given to countries to end child marriage as well as domestic figures on child marriage, during its 2018 Voluntary National Review at the High Level Political Forum, the mechanism through which countries report their progress on the Sustainable Development Goals."
Action Canada for Sexual and Health Rights

Canada's explicitly "feminist" government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau considers itself a leader and vital funder of efforts to end child marriage under the imprimatur of the United Nations where the practise is considered a measure of a country's social development. Canada is proud of the fact that it is involved in combating the incidence of child marriage, forced marriages, the entire culture of girls being viewed as ready for marriage at age 12 and upward. The very practise of both forced and child marriage is an assault against the human rights of any child, male or female.

The welfare of girls and women in developing countries and Canada's involvement in establishing a United Nations fund to elevate the quality of life for both girls and women in impoverished conditions was in fact initiated by the previous Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The current Liberal government has expanded that initiative to protecting girls from being forced into early marriage, by custom and culture. Where marriage confers no benefits to the girls, but hastens them into adulthood, robbing them of their childhood.

Children who are married often must cook with fire and heavy pots of boiling water over unventilated cookstoves. (iStock)

So, is Canada an exemplar of commitment to upholding the rights of girls not to be forced into marriage before adulthood? Not quite; even as the Liberal government congratulates itself for its 'progressive' credentials in caring for the human rights of girls in developing countries while portraying itself as their champion, in Canada itself, child marriages continue to occur and seemingly no one in the federal government feels obliged to take much notice of it.

The simple fact of the matter is, while the Canadian government is prepared to intervene in the marriage fortunes of under-privileged girls in developing countries, where immigrants to Canada have brought their child-marriage culture with them to Canada, authorities are loathe to interfere in fear that they will be accused of infringing on peoples' religious freedom. Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada people are guaranteed the right to practise and freedom of religion.

So the reality is that Canada, while deploring child marriages abroad in countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and African countries, legally permits the very same practise in Canada. Various provinces issue marriage licences -- some 3,382 of them, allowing children to be legally married in Canada, over the past 18 years.

Ontario permitted 1,353 child marriages from 2000 forward, Alberta 791, Quebec 590 and British Columbia 429. These reflect immigrants' cultural practises imported with them into Canada. And government authorities' unwillingness to intervene.

Children who are married off do hard labour like agricultural work, cooking, lifting heavy pots and other household chores from dawn to dusk, notes an advocacy group. (iStock)

Compared to boys who are also forced into early marriages, girls marry at younger ages, and often to substantially older males. Five girls per 10,000 population represents the rate in Alberta, contrasting with 1 boy forced into early marriage out of 10,000 population figures, according to measured data dating from the year 2016; three children total per 10,000. Data derived from vital statistics offices while indicating early marriages occur in Canada, offer limited additional information.

Census data might be thought of as clarifying the issue with a more distinct idea of demographics, but that data will include marriages that took place in other countries prior to emigration to Canada. The rate of child marriage in the United States stands at about 6.2 children per 1,000, more elevated for girls than for boys, at 6.8 versus 5.7. The practise is lower among white populations, higher among Indigenous and Chinese.

In Maine, Rhode Island and Wyoming the rate is less than four children per 1,000, graduating upward to as much as ten per 1,000 population in West Virginia, Hawaii and North Dakota, figures provided through Dr Koski's previous American studies of child marriage. Sub-Saharan Africa and India provided figures on child marriage for her doctoral research, feeding into the popular image of child marriage as "something that happens elsewhere".

The minimum age for marriage in Canada set out by Canada's federal Civil Marriage Act is 16, whereas licensing, administered by provinces requires parental consent for those younger than 18 years of age, to acquire a marriage license. According to the standards of the United Nations to which Canada is a participant, child marriage is regarded as a marriage of a child; someone under the age of 18.

Research that has taken place in the United States demonstrates higher mental illness and substance abuse in women who were girl brides.