In what will become a classic book, John Cogan in 2017 wrote “The High Cost of Good Intentions” documenting how ineffective American programs targeted at helping those less fortunate have been in achieving their objectives and how much more costly they have been than imagined by their authors. Poverty in the United States had been falling sharply for decades until President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the “war on poverty” in 1965 and from that point forward progress in reducing poverty stalled and the percentage of Americans living in poverty actually rose.
Canada’s progress in alleviating poverty appears somewhat better but the number and percentage of Canadians living in poverty remains stubbornly above 10%, much like the American experience.
The overall numbers mask a deep divide between mainstream Canadians and those identified as First Nations where the poverty rate is more than double the Canadian average. First Nations poverty is a result of indigenous Canadians living under the regime set out in the Indian Act and the overt efforts by Canadian governments to compel First Nations people to assimilate, including the ill-conceived and disastrous residential schools program that persisted for over a century. Canadian leaders “good intentions” are doubtful although many governments from all parties oversaw the abuses and often proclaimed these efforts were in the best interests of the indigenous children.
Canada has enormous energy, mining and forestry resources - so large that if developed fully could provide enough royalty revenue to eliminate all taxation at all levels in Canada, but our “well-intentioned” leaders have put their thumb on the scale of “public good” suppressing that development claiming the risks to the environment outweighed the economic benefits. My article comparing Canada to Norway set the table for a sensible analysis of the economic costs of these policies. Government after government has put “feel good” policies ahead of the real and tangible benefits to Canadians of resource development, replacing what works with what sounds good.
The current government under Justin Trudeau is the worst in Canadian history in my opinion, lacking any common sense whatsoever and pretending their “woke” agenda of diversity, inclusion, climate change and open borders will make Canada a better country when in fact they divide our nation, drive higher inflation at the cost of lower economic gains and make housing unaffordable for most Canadians. Each policy comes with the usual smarmy speeches and left wing rhetoric about “fairness”, “racial justice” and “public good” but is devoid of tangible benefit. Instead, our sovereign debt is out of control, the cost of living is rising quickly, and economic opportunities are foregone based on a specious belief that CO2 is a pollutant. CO2 cannot cause any material amount of “global warming” as I have set out in my article “How much warmer can CO2 make Earth?”. Trudeau and his cabinet like to pretend that there is a “science” that ordinary Canadians can’t understand but comprises the “consensus” of 97% of “climate scientists” and therefore must be valid. In fact, there is no such consensus and the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory is unproven. For a true scientific theory to be valid, it must posit a falsifiable theory of cause and effect and be shown valid by subsequent empirical data that conforms to the predicted value. Every report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has included a prediction based on the theory and every prediction has been a far cry from subsequent measurements.
Noted Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said it succinctly:
Zeke Hausfather, a noted climate alarmist, published a paper comparing actual to predicted outcomes of the AGW theory, claiming the outcomes were “reasonably consistent” with the predictions, despite differences in actual versus predicted values from 28% less to 30% more. To be fair, no one can even measure “global average temperature” with any accuracy but a reasoned review of these outcomes is evidence that the theory lacks substance. One AGW claim is that global temperatures have risen 1 degree Celsius since 1750 while CO2 levels have risen from 280 to 417 ppm of atmosphere, which is pointed to as evidence of causation. When this claim is seen through the lens of the degree of difference between actual and predicted values that Hausfather calls “reasonably consistent” it is sensible to conclude the AGW theory verges on nonsense. The 1 degree Celsius claimed rise in global average temperatures over 270 years is deeply within the range of the errors between the predicted and observed warming rates Hausfather reports from 1970-2016 (listed in the table from Hausfather’s article set out below). No one can really tell whether temperatures rose, fell or stayed the same over that long period.
Democracy works well when elected leaders combine good intentions with common sense. We have a Liberal government today that is rife with claims of “good intentions” and devoid of common sense. It is time to boot them down the road.