World leaders are unified in their support for Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in the face of Russian aggression, but the underbelly of the Ukraine is less admirable than its current leader’s courage. The conflict in Ukraine has brought international attention on to a region that has always been controversial with issues ranging from the Hunter Biden scandal to international money laundering.
A bit under the radar are the links of Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland to Ukraine. Ms. Freeland’s family comes from that part of the world, and she speaks Ukranian with native fluency. Her maternal grandfather, Michael Chomiak, was the editor of a pro-Nazi newspaper in World War II. Her claims her family were victims of Nazi persecution are reportedly false, with evidence pointing to benefits her family received for their Nazi collaboration.
On her recent trip to Europe, Freeland and Trudeau met with a Neo-Nazi extremist Andriy Parubiy. It was more of a reunion than a meeting since Freeland and Trudeau have known Parubiy for several years. Photos appeared of Freeland standing apparently approvingly with an extremist banner, the neo-Nazi significance of which was denied by Freeland’s press secretary and labeled “KGB disinformation” but the photo is neither disputed nor disputable. At a minimum it was tone deaf and did nothing to enhance Canada’s image in the region.
Chrystia Freeland attended University of Kviv as an exchange student while studying a Russian History and Literature at Harvard University, and in 1993 completed a Master’s Degree in Slavonic Studies at Oxford University. She is a Rhodes Scholar. Post graduation, she acted as correspondent and Moscow bureau chief for the Financial Times. Her roots to Eastern Europe go deep.
Freeland today is perhaps the most powerful woman in Canada, serving both as Minister of Finance in Justin Trudeau’s government and as Deputy Prime Minister, and carrying the Minister of Environment portfolio. She is among the most highly educated of cabinet members and sports a pedigree that includes honors and awards for personal achievement.
Some have criticized Freeland for lacking credentials in economics and finance to underpin her role as Minister of Finance. In fact, she is well qualified for that role, with her understanding of finance and economics evident througout her published books. She has a sophistication not often found in Trudeau’s cabinet choices, equivalent in my view to the excellent credentials of Minister of National Defense, Anita Anand, who has a brilliant academic career. Canadians on all sides of the political aisle admire Freeland’s accomplishments but do not uniformly admire her ideology.
What is that ideology? We can label her as a Trudeau acolyte but that may understate her goals and objectives in politics or her ability to lead Canada and bring about lasting changes to our society.
Freeland is an accomplished author with at least three books to her credit. Those books give an insight into her ideological beliefs. The most important of them is “Plutocrats”, and extraordinarily well written and incisive study of the ultra-rich not only today but also throughout history. The book is meticulously footnoted with support for its rich fact base throughout. I get the impression that Freeland is at home with the super rich and perhaps envious of their successes and power. Her book’s title has a by-line: “The rise of the super rich and the fall of everyone else”. That choice of by-line demonstrates her distaste for the plutocrats she hangs out with despite her book’s explicit recognition that the “plutocrats” created the bulk of the wealth socialists wants to re-distribute and that most of Earth’s population has benefited from their successes. At one point she comments on “trickle down” economics which is a theory that not one economist has ever promoted but is in fact a talking point created by left wing governments to vilify the most successful people in their societies as part of their platform to “tax the rich”. The rich already pay the bulk of all taxes collected by every democratic government everywhere on Earth.
Freeland’s book makes it clear that income and wealth inequality are age old, and that the inequality is not only rich versus poor, but also rich versus super rich. That insight is consistent with the findings of Vilifredo Pareto over a century ago, any many successor economists, that income inequality and wealth inequality are part and parcel of every society regardless of its form of government.
Freeland’s admiration for George Soros, who she considers a friend, is an insight into who she really is - a woman who might welcome a shift of Canada into the authoritarian socialist government Soros wants to inflict on the whole world. Socialism has a record of failure in every society that has embraced it. Soros’ objectives through philanthropy are well-described in an article published by left-wing news rag “Washington Post” which tries make his objectives palatable - a bit like putting lipstick on a pig. The crime wave engulfing America today has its roots in donations by Soros to progressive District Attorney’s and prosecutors who have reduced or eliminated bail for even violent offenders and de-criminalized theft below $1,000 producing daily shoplifting sprees throughout California cities by crooks who know there is no sanction for petty theft.
Freeland has a similar level of admiration for Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of Canada and later the Bank of England. Carney is a brilliant financial executive who, like Freeland, has succumbed to the theoretical nonsense that CO2 causes climate change and has become an activist promoting changes to the financial system to starve fossil fuel developers access to capital. Not only is CO2 harmless but also the flight of capital from fossil fuel development is in the early stages of creating a global energy shortage that will inflict misery on millions, drive energy prices even higher, and fuel rampant inflation. The dream that so-called “renewables” can provide enough power to displace fossil fuels is an absurdity.
It saddens me to see such talented people as Freeland and Carney seduced by the “climate change” rhetoric and willing (or even eager) to reconstruct society to achieve Net Zero, and objective that if achieved could spell the end of humanity. The left wing propaganda promoting climate change fears now have a high degree of momentum and enjoy broad popular belief despite being devoid of actual scientific foundation. The most often cited claim is that a “majority of climate scientists agree” that CO2 causes global warming - an outright falsehood which would be of little probative value even if true. Some 60 Nobel laureates have publicly stated they disagree with the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), but that gets little press. Also ignored by Trudeau, Freeland, Carney, Biden and a host of others are three simple truths:
One, it is virtually impossible to actually measure global average temperature as pointed out by Richard Lindzen, then the head of MIT’s physics department who specializes in atmospheric physics, saying: “"How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don't think that's possible.” It would take considerable calculus to integrate the daily changes in temperature for any given day in Collingwood to come up with an average for that day and the result unlikely to be accurate to within 1 degree C. Radio station CITY News 680 provides a “weather guarantee” with a reward to a lucky listener for any day when the forecast daily temperature is in error by more than 3 degrees C. and frequently has paid out thousands of dollars in prizes.
Two, slightly warmer atmosphere at altitude cannot possibly warm an already warmer surface below. Temperatures above sea level decline at a rate of about .8 degrees Celsius per thousand meter rise above sea level, a phenomenon known as the dry adiabatic lapse rate. This result flows from the laws of thermodynamics.
Three, atmospheric CO2 levels have been far higher than today’s 420 ppm in Earth’s history (as high as several thousand ppm) yet life on Earth survived.
The politicization of the AGW was made clear by public statements of its promoters, in particular the IPCC.
Canada benefits from having truly talented people like Freeland and Carney when they apply those talents to the real problems facing our society. Either has the potential to be a great Prime Minister if he or she could shed the AGW nonsense and turn their minds to the economic benefits of developing Canada’s energy resources which would benefit both Canada and the world.
Pierre Poilievre seems to be the only Canadian leader with enough sense to see clearly the dangers of AGW and the benefits of developing our resources. If elected and appointed Prime Minister, Poilievre promises to build pipelines, abolish the West Coast tanker ban and build the Canadian oil & gas industry. Canada would be well served if he were to succeed. Freeland or Carney, not so much, and Trudeau - well he is a disaster perpetuated by Jagmeet Singh.