
Take Back Alberta facing collection notice as it appeals $112K in Elections Alberta fines
Court scheduling is underway to hear an appeal from activist group Take Back Alberta (TBA) as it seeks to overturn $112,500 in fines for election advertising violations that have since been referred to Crown debt collection.
Article content
The fines were imposed last February on TBA and its founder David Parker by Elections Alberta for what it describes as 'numerous substantive breaches' of the Election Finances and Contributions Disclosure Act, including TBA's absence of financial reporting, circumventing advertising spending limits, and accepting money from outside the province.
Article content
Article content
Article content
Those violations were linked to TBA's online and in-person events ahead of the May 2023 provincial election.
Article content
Article content
On March 6, TBA filed documents in Court of King's Bench in Calgary seeking to appeal the fines, arguing that its events did not constitute political advertising — contrary to the findings of election commissioner Paula Hale — and that its Charter right to political expression had been infringed.
Article content
According to the appeal notice, TBA's lawyers are seeking 'a declaration that the decision, or part thereof, was incorrect, unreasonable, a palpable and overriding error, and/or constitutionally invalid,' as well as a declaration that the fines were 'excessively punitive, disproportionate, incorrect, (and) unreasonable.'
Article content
Article content
In a statement, Elections Alberta noted legislation prevents it from commenting on specific investigations, but confirmed both the fines and its direction to TBA to refile certain financial reports remain in force.
Article content
It added those unpaid fines have been referred to Crown debt collection, and the group's failure to refile the reports has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service.
Article content
Parker formed TBA in 2022 and later claimed credit for helping oust former premier Jason Kenney as United Conservative Party (UCP) leader in May of that year. He and the group have had varying degrees of influence on the party's policies in the years since.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


National Post
3 hours ago
- National Post
Chris Selley: Banning MAGA singer Sean Feucht, Canada slips further into Trump-ian incoherence
Article content You'll often hear politicians say that government-owned spaces have a special obligation not to rent venues to people whose views don't reflect appropriate 'values.' 'When it comes to public buildings, I believe we should hold ourselves to the highest standard,' then Toronto mayor John Tory averred in 2019, when the Toronto Public Library rented a stage to barely controversial feminist Meghan Murphy. Article content It's exactly the opposite. Government-owned venues are subject to the Charter. Privately owned venues, such as those Feucht ended up performing at instead near Halifax, Moncton and Charlottetown, are not. It would certainly be interesting to see someone mount a Charter challenge to these decisions. Article content Article content As is often the case with censorship, one of the primary achievements of these cancellations was to give a ton of free publicity to Feucht. He's not exactly a household name even in the United States. Exactly one of his records has ever charted: at number 37 on Billboard's Christian albums, in 2016. His constituency is considerably smaller north of the border. I would never even have heard of him had these cities just let the shows go ahead. Article content Article content Had we denied him entry to Canada, as many were calling for, it would have been an even bigger deal. It's also one of those things you could imagine Trump taking note of and retaliating — say, by banning godless Canadian bands from crossing the border and performing in the U.S. Article content And the crazy thing is, many Canadians would say, 'good, they shouldn't be playing in the U.S. anyway.' Canadian singer-songwriter Matthew Good received lavish praise for cancelling his stateside shows recently … though he had only booked them in January, when Trump was already president. Article content

National Observer
12 hours ago
- National Observer
Convoy sentencing part of a fraught judicial history around protest
Tamara Lich emerged from the Ontario Court of Justice in downtown Ottawa on Thursday afternoon, walking past throngs of journalists, right wing media personalities and dedicated supporters brandishing signs. The two-day sentencing hearing for Lich and Chris Barber — two of the 'Freedom Convoy's' main organizers — saw their supporters from the Ottawa Valley and even as far as Alberta gather both outside and inside the courthouse to sing the praises of these controversial figures. Inside the courtroom, with roughly 60 observers and journalists on day one, the mood was mellow and restrained, save for a smattering of snickers when the Crown attorney said this case is not about political views. The spectacle provided an opportunity for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party of Canada to reaffirm their loyalty to the far-right segment of their base. 'The Crown wants 7 years prison time for the charge of mischief for Lich & Barber,' Poilievre posted on X, two days before the sentencing hearing began. 'How is this justice?' 'This is political vengeance, not actual justice,' wrote deputy Conservative Leader Melissa Lantsman. As Lich and Barber await their sentences, expected to be announced on Oct. 7, these statements and many more like them continue to ricochet through the conservative media ecosystem. Ezra Levant, founder of Rebel News, showed up at the Ottawa court to cover the two-day hearing; so did right-wing influencers like Right Blend and Dacey Media. Those who couldn't make it in person posted from afar. 'Canada is turning into a banana republic,' the Pleb Reporter posted from Montreal. 'The left are cheering for dictator style punishments for light dissent. A protest where no violence occurred. Please wake up Canada.' Canada's National Observer obtained an internal report by the CSIS spy agency on 'Climate Change and Terrorism.' The majority of the document — some 90 per cent of the text — focuses on threats posed by environmentalists. Transport Canada has estimated that the Convoy movement cost Canadians $3.9 billion in lost trade due to the convoy-affiliated border blockades that spread across the country in February 2022. The protests cost the city of Ottawa over $36 million, mostly on policing. That figure doesn't include the cost to businesses forced to close for weeks, or the harm done to some 12,000 residents of Ottawa's Centretown whose homes were bombarded by the noise of semi-trucks honking their horns in synchronized 10-minute blasts, loud and long enough to cause permanent hearing damage. 'It's really hard to describe how fucked up those horns were,' Paul Champ, the lawyer who filed the injunction that ultimately forced an end to the honking — but not the occupation — told Canada's National Observer. 'They had a schedule. Four hundred semi-trucks pulling down all together. It was dystopian.' Champ was initially reluctant to get involved. 'I believe really deeply in protest, and it doesn't matter what issue you're protesting. You should have the right to be out there. There's lots of reasonable reasons to disagree with certain COVID measures and given how significant the impact was on people's life, people should protest,' he said. He also felt protest leaders shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of a few bad actors, like those who defecated on residents' lawns or sent fireworks bouncing off apartment walls. But the damage done by the horns, along with the serial harassment of businesses and residents alike for wearing masks (at a time when mask-wearing was mandated for public indoor spaces to prevent COVID's spread), changed his mind. 'It's important to distinguish between the issues that the people were protesting and the manner in which they were protesting,' Champ said. 'They were honking those horns because they were trying to make living downtown extremely difficult. And they were doing that to put pressure on the government … they were kind of holding the people of downtown Ottawa hostage.' For the Conservative Party to become the movement's champion without acknowledging any of those harms spoke volumes, Champ added. Poilievre famously brought donuts to members of the Convoy during the blockades, and described them as 'bright, joyful, and peaceful Canadians championing freedom over fear.' 'Poilievre never spoke out about how miserable it was for the people who have young kids, for the elderly, people with disabilities, the shelters that are downtown, all the business people — he just didn't give a crap because he's exploiting it for political gain.' That strategy created an enormous new base for Poilievre in 2022, almost overnight. 'Pierre took a principled stance which hurt him politically when it mattered the most. This is how he earned my loyalty,' the Pleb Reporter posted on Monday. Courting the Convoy vote brought Poilievre within a hair of becoming prime minister, but ultimately backfired spectacularly. It cost him not only the election but also the parliamentary seat (Carleton, which abuts downtown Ottawa) he had held for 21 years. Judging by their engagement with this week's sentencing of Lich and Barber, however, Poilievre and the Conservatives still view their Convoy following as crucial to the party's future. In return, right-wing influencers such as The Pleb Reporter, Right Blend and others were quick to thank Poilievre for speaking up about the sentencing this week, marking the first time many of them have mentioned the Conservative leader since he lost the election. If any doubts remained about whether the two groups still feel they need each other, this week should put them to rest. Who does the state fear more? This chapter of the Freedom Convoy's legal travails also revives deeper questions about which protest groups are seen as threats by Canadian authorities, and which are not. Canada's National Observer obtained an internal report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) spy agency entitled ' Climate Change and Terrorism: From Threat Multiplication to Radicalization.' The report was produced in July 2024, two years after the Freedom Convoy. It includes a brief mention of 'the Freedom Movement' under a one-paragraph sidebar labeled 'Climate denialists and the Culture Wars.' Here, the report briefly acknowledges that climate denial is merging with other conspiracy theories to 'drive acts of serious violence or terrorism.' Among the hybrids identified are 'conspiracy theories about government attempts to restrict individual freedoms (e.g. 'climate lockdown').' But the majority of the document — some 90 per cent of the text — focuses on threats posed by environmentalists. 'In Canada, a significant increase in the frequency or severity of extreme weather is likely to drive radicalization to violence and increase the threat from environmentally focused terrorists in the medium to long term,' the report states. It further predicts the 'increased use of extreme weather events in propaganda by violent extremists to radicalize and recruit new supporters, notably by assigning blame for climate-driven disasters on specific groups (migrants, politicians, industries, etc.).' Headings that follow include 'Eco-terrorism,' 'Violent fringes of the environmental movement,' and 'Eco-Fascists.' CSIS did not reply to queries about this report from Canada's National Observer. Asked whether the organization views eco-radicals as a greater threat to national security than right-wing groups like the Freedom Convoy, a spokesperson wrote by email: 'CSIS's 2024 Public report — available online — provides a detailed overview of how CSIS views the current global threat environment.' That report, however, only mentions 'climate change' once in passing, without naming any specific related threats. It says nothing about eco-terrorism, climate denialism or the Freedom Convoy. James Turk, director for the Centre for Free Expression, reviewed the document. The CSIS Integrated Threat Assessment Centre is a specialized organization whose job is to look at the rise in terrorism and other threats, so it makes sense the report doesn't dwell on the 'culture wars' and climate denial, he said in an interview with Canada's National Observer. But viewing the environmental movement through the lens of terrorism creates an environment where the discussion shifts from how to limit radicalization rather than how to limit the damages of climate change, he said. 'Let's prevent the problem rather than figure out how we're going to police the outcome if we don't remedy the problem,' Turk said. Who's scarier, eco-terrorists or right-wing radicals? It's common for protesters from all ideological backgrounds to feel unjustly persecuted by police. But for all the complaints from Conservatives and Freedom Convoy members over their rough treatment at the end of their blockade, the Convoy's start was marked by an unusual level of police cooperation. 'The big question was why the police did not enforce any laws for that particular group,' said Joao Velloso, a professor of criminology at the University of Ottawa. When truckers started pulling into downtown Ottawa, he noted, police didn't even hand out tickets for illegal parking. 'It's quite scary that police can decide to not enforce any laws. That's quite dangerous for democracy.' Images of police officers shaking hands and taking selfies with protesters emerged not just from Ottawa, but also from other convoy blockades throughout the country, like the one in Coutts, Alberta, where some of the protesters were later found to have been stockpiling assault weapons. Each of these groups was blocking critical infrastructure, collectively inflicting billions of dollars of damage on the national economy. This paints a stark contrast to the treatment given to environmental and Indigenous protesters who target infrastructure. During the Fairy Creek protests against old growth logging on Vancouver Island in 2021, RCMP officers were filmed tearing the masks off protesters before spraying them point blank in the face with pepper spray — tactics a judge later declared illegal — for blocking a logging road. Two years before that, during the Wet'suwet'en protests against BC's Coastal GasLink pipeline, RCMP dispatched snipers ahead of a militarized arrest of Indigenous protesters and journalists, generating international headlines. It is hard to compare how various protest groups are treated because with all the different factions and protest methods it's rarely an apples to apples comparison. For example, the 'Freedom Convoy' protests were exceptional because the protesters utilized huge hard-to-remove trucks, which he says may have thrown a spanner in the police response in Ottawa. While Turk emphasized it's 'hard to generalize' which groups are perceived and treated as a bigger threat by the state, overall, 'people who see themselves as defenders of the environment have been treated more harshly than people who are promoting the exploitation of the environment,' Turk said. In Canada, property rights and trespass law 'are used to justify harsh treatment of many progressive protests' including ones that interfere with logging, pipelines and energy infrastructure or advocate for Palestinian solidarity, he said. Many environmental, climate and land defender movements go against the status quo — anchored by the political, economic, legal and corporate landscape in Canada — and are therefore likely to be perceived as a threat, Turk added, nodding to the immense power and influence of fossil fuel lobby groups both in Canada and the US. Powerful lobby groups influence the political agenda and seek to shape views on national threats, whether it pertains to war or climate change — and right now, it appears fossil fuel interests are shaping the narrative, Turk said. 'When we talk about who we're afraid of, we're afraid of the left,' said Meaghan Daniel, a Montreal lawyer who has defended activists and Indigenous protest movements across the country. Daniel has roots in activism herself, and was deeply involved in the left-wing G20 protests in Toronto in 2010, where 1,100 people were arrested in the largest mass arrest in Canadian history. The police chief in charge of that operation, Bill Blair, was later put in charge of CSIS and the RCMP as public safety minister. 'For a long time we've seen extensive surveillance and infiltration of far-left groups, but we didn't see that [with the Freedom Convoy],' Daniel said. ''We didn't even see the acknowledgement of far-right groups until about a decade after the G20.' That helps explain why authorities were caught 'flat-footed' by Convoy groups in 2022, when they seized critical infrastructure all across the nation with almost no effort to prevent them until it was too late. 'I think they were really surprised at the existence of far-right extremist organizing.' Even after all levels of government awoke to the scale of the threat, the way police finally ended the Convoy protests was far more peaceful than similar actions against major left-wing acts of civil disobedience. Almost no arrests were made, and in the end only three people were criminally charged. During the Wet'suwet'en protests, RCMP arrested 74 people in four separate raids. At Fairy Creek, the number of arrests once again surpassed 1,100 and many were prosecuted. 'If you look at all the mass incarceration events, they're almost entirely left-wing,' Daniel said. At the same time, Daniel agrees that the Crown's recommendation of 7 and 8 year jail terms for Lich and Barber, respectively, is far longer than typical for protest organizers. 'I don't want to see a huge, long jail sentence happening,' she said. 'Aggressive policing only ends up radicalizing people. Whenever forceful removal of a protester happens, usually that protester in turn doesn't become more compliant and trusting of the state. The opposite happens.'


Winnipeg Free Press
13 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Think big, think proud
Opinion Now that we have our elbows up, we can look below and discover the potential; discover the need. Why has Canada relied on other countries for a vast array of services and production? Let's come up with Manitoban or Canadian solutions. Think big. Let's go all in! So, to hear that our minister of environment and climate change, Mike Moyes has made 5,000 heat pumps more readily available just doesn't cut it. Actually, the Crown corporation Efficiency Manitoba already has an incentive program for heat pumps. How about 50,000 or 500,000? Think big! Also, that would benefit immensely our net-zero target. What about announcements in regard to Manitoba Hydro's future plans? Remember, Manitoba Hydro controls electricity and natural gas (which is 80 per cent methane) supplies. Again, they just don't cut it. There is no mention of any significant energy-producing projects, such as large wind farms in the works, or building solar farms in the making. How about solar panels on every home? Did you know that in the Netherlands one in three homes has solar panels? Why hasn't Manitoba Hydro been more involved in geothermal projects? Of note, Waverley West, a community in Winnipeg, was supposed to have a geothermal energy source. What we hope or should expect to hear from Finance Minister Adrien Sala are, in my view, twofold: plan for a net-zero target; and aggressively pursue renewables so the electrification of homes and buildings can take place soon, and greenhouse gas use and emissions can be eliminated. So what do we hear in reports such as Manitoba Hydro's integrated resource plan and the Manitoba Affordable Energy Plan? There is no mention of an aggressive move away from natural gas. This is very much not in keeping with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. What we hear from Manitoba Hydro is that they project no change in natural gas use by 2030. Manitoba Hydro states that to get to net-zero, the use of direct air capture (DAC), which is another way of saying carbon capture, is what they will rely on. Let's be very clear. Carbon capture and DAC are largely unproven despite a lengthy trial period time. It is the opinion of many that the mention of carbon capture or direct air capture is a form of greenwashing — 'Look, we are doing something; don' t try to regulate us.' It is also disappointing to hear nothing from Moyes or Sala about retrofitting current buildings and homes, meaning to replace natural gas systems with heat pumps, electric furnaces and electric boilers. This is the first priority of Canada's Green Buildings Strategy. Actually, the only mention of natural gas was in speaking to the question of energy supply security — what if the renewable energy supply failed? You would like to hear that the problem could be dealt with by a large increase in renewable supply and investing in battery technology, to help get through the down times. The other mention of natural gas was that it may be the case that, to meet current and future energy demands, two new energy production plants would have to be built. Unfortunately, the source of energy to run these new facilities likely is natural gas. Again, one would like to hear that our planned increase in renewables should easily meet any energy demands. Relying on renewables to be the main source of power is working very well in parts of the world and Canada. Spain now has most of its energy supply from renewables. They have massive solar farms. Texas has about one-third of its energy needs met by renewables. A recent article about Nova Scotia states they propose to build enough offshore wind turbines to produce 40 gigawatts of electricity. This is an ambitious plan and time will tell if it comes to fruition, but the Nova Scotia premier states ' the excess electricity could supply 27 per cent of Canada's total demands. I guess my point is we know that renewable energy projects are being built at national, provincial, statewide and municipal levels, so really, what's the hold-up? Think of the cost savings associated with the mitigating of climate change. Specifically, the elimination of methane. Let's think big and think proud. We can do it! Scott Blyth writes from Brandon.