Woke Liberals want to re-imagine corporations to target ESG goals
Voters need to re-imagine government to get Ottawa out of intervention in the economy and restore personal and corporate freedoms devoid of "woke" nonsense
There is a leftist movement to “re-imagine” the role of corporations in Canadian society, with a push to impose social goals like “climate change” and “diversity, equity and inclusion” on corporate boards and encourage the government to impose more control over the Canadian economy. The Canadian Coalition for a Better Future is in the vanguard of the this movement and will almost certainly ensure Canada’s future is far worse than today. This neo-Marxism won’t have a happy ending.
Trudea’s Liberal government keeps screwing up Canada by pretending a carbon tax can change the weather and suppressing development of Canada’s vast resource industry with its toxic Impact Assessment Act and incessant fear-mongering based on the specious claim that increased fossil fuel emission are responsible for climate change, a physical impossibility. Important scientific research (actual science based ont the laws of physics rather than political science based on leftist nonsense) keeps surfacing the compelling evidence that CO2 is not only harmless but also has played virtually no role whatsoever in the changes in climate since the beginning of the industrial revolution around 1750.
A 2022 scientific paper1 demonstrated this reality conclusively by examining how much of atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 2018 actually came from fossil fuel emissions by parsing the nature of the CO2 molecules present in the atmosphere in 2018 and assuming no CO2 molecules in the atmosphere today came from fossil fuel emissions before 1750 when humans first started using fossil fuels for energy. The abstract of this paper sums it up.
The paper followed a paper published by Cornell University which demonstrated that CO2 levels today are saturated and incapable of creating any further “warming”.2
Milton Friedman famously stated that the purpose of a corporation is to earn profits for investors. He was right. Imposing social goals on officers and directors of corporations who were not elected by the general electorate in a provincial or federal election presumes that social goals are fixed and cannot be changed by voters by electing a new government except with the lag between each election and the resulting changes, if any, in corporate and securities laws enacted by an incoming government to address the inconsistencies between the social goals of the outgoing government and the ESG goals imposed on the corporate sector by its predecessor. Social goals a not fixed. Laws that outlawed homosexuality decades ago are long since corrected; laws that denied women the right to vote have been rescinded; laws that imposed capital punishment on murderers and traitors have been superceded. Those laws were consistent with social goals when enacted and would be seen as perverse today. Social goals change.
As importantly, successful corporations are essential to economic prosperity. Return on capital employed is the correct goal for corporations, bridled by appropriate restrictions to protect society from fraud, environmental damage, monopolistic pricing or mistreatment of workers as examples. Corporations flourish in free markets and society benefits from higher employment and greater economic activity.
Governments should stick to their lane. We elect them to enact laws to protect society but not to mandate individual or corporation behaviour, only to restrict both only to the level needed to protect citizens. Canada is not a country where elected governments are elected to mandate what they deem to be “good” behaviour. We want our governments to limit themselves to only restrict behaviour that threatens the life, liberty or security of citizens. This is a fundamental tenet of our free society. Justin Trudeau wants to change that - to dictate what Canadians can say, can think, and must do. His policies lie somewhere between Orwellian and Marxist. [Orwellian is term to describe works by Eric Arthur Blair who wrote now famous books under the name “George Orwell”, Marxist refers to works by Friedrich Engels for which Karl Marx took credit]
The size and scope of governments should be kept to the minimum needed to meet the objectives of life, liberty and security and enact laws to ensure the highest safe degree of personal and corporate freedom. It is time to re-imagine Canadian government and go back to the days of balanced budgets, individual responsibility and limited government intervention in free markets. Our government is the key player in redistributing wealth but has demonstrated a total lack of competence in creating wealth. That knowledge and competence is the lifeblood of business organizations, not governments.
Low taxes, a progressive tax system that generates enough revenue to fund key programs like health care, education, sensible income redistribution, efficient public infrastructure and a fair and accessible system of justice is what benefits Canadians. Governments that try to do more accomplish less and deprive Canadians of economic prosperity and individual freedom and opportunity.
Get rid of Trudeau. Sideline the Liberal Party until it returns to its historic values of small government, balanced budgets, low taxes, and free markets, and elect the current conservative party which has moved so far left it is indistinguishable from the Liberal party of 1960 (and that is a good thing). Don’t be mesmerized by traditional labels. Today’s liberals are outright socialists and no longer represent Canada’s core culture or values. New Democrats are communists disguised as “democratic socialists” whatever that term means. The Green Party is simply irrelevant. Conservatives are now traditional Liberals and only the PPC is a right wing party in 2023.
It is time to give Pierre Poilievre a chance to restore Canada to common sense. He is the only party leader today who makes any sense when he speaks.
World Atmospheric CO2, Its 14C Specific Activity, Non-fossil Component, Anthropogenic Fossil Component, and Emissions (1750–2018), Kenneth Skrable, George Chabot, and Clayton French, Health Physics Society journal, 2022.
[2004.00708] Saturation of the Infrared Absorption by Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere (arxiv.org)
I'd disagree on 1 point - Bernier makes plenty of sense when he speaks. But Poilievre will be getting my vote for many reasons, primarily because the media has been too successful in their smear campaign against MB and I believe voting for MB would therefore be a wasted vote, and we need to remove this corrupt, arrogant Liberal government asap. They are quite literally doing longterm damage to the nation. Canada has, I believe, a population one tenth that of the US, yet we have similar numbers of political positions. That is an absurd waste of money and makes the people even more powerless to affect change. Our govt is too big; they control us - we work for them.