Author: Stella Ambler

Great news! Since I reported on Calgary’s bold and terrific policy on banning the flying of foreign flags at its City Hall, two of Ontario’s largest cities followed the lead of these courageous Alberta city councillors: Toronto and Mississauga. 

In a 19-7 vote on March 26, 2026, Toronto city councillors voted to enact a policy like Calgary’s.  This new policy won’t take effect until December 1, 2026, though. That’s after this autumn’s municipal election, and it falls on the first day in office for the new Toronto city council. 

Kudos to Toronto City Councillors Jon Burnside and Michael Thompson for putting forward the motion! 

“A flag is supposed to be a symbol of what brings us together, not a focal point of what divides us. And unfortunately, it’s been a focal point of what divides us,” said Councillor Burnside. “I’ve watched riot squads of police officers go up and down Bay Street in preparation for a particular flag raising, and that has to stop,” he added. 

Councillor Thompson noted that there were “a lot of geopolitical issues around the world and we’re being asked to take sides.”  

“I don’t think it’s our business,” Thompson said, adding that “council is not the place to negotiate or to be involved in geopolitical issues and conflicts around the world.” 

The following week, Mississauga city councillors also banned the flying of foreign flags at city hall.   

Mississauga’s vote on a motion by Mayor Carolyn Parrish took place on April 1, 2026 – happily, not an April Fool’s joke! – and it surpassed Toronto’s in both timing and resolve. The new Mississauga policy took effect immediately, meaning “no more foreign flags” is now the active policy in Mississauga, applying specifically to “the courtesy flagpole in Celebration Square.” The motion even applies retroactively to any requests that have already been approved. 

In addition to the foreign flag ban, the motion that passed in Mississauga also included a ban on “the display of lights associated with national colours (with the exception of those of Canada) on the Civic Centre clock tower.” 

As Mayor Parrish noted on the passing of the motion in Mississauga: “Our citizens come from all over the world, leaving conflicts to become Canadians. We welcome all.” 

And, so, congratulations are due to these three city councils – Toronto, Mississauga and the first one, Calgary city council – for leading the way! 

Now, I recognize that the foreign flag issue is merely “symbolic” and that there are surely “more important issues” to be discussed. Indeed, if you have been following my blog posts this year, you will have read about some of them: climate alarmism, oil & gas advertising bans, the dangers of Net Zero, electric vehicle mandates, the War on the Car, and other extreme green left environmental policies, for example.  

But, make no mistake, the symbolism of the foreign flag ban is indeed powerful.  Local councillors who aren’t prepared to vote the right way on such a simple issue are very likely going to be “woke” and extremist on a whole host of other issues. 

Please join our campaign to get YOUR municipality to join Calgary, Toronto and Mississauga city councils to ban the flying of foreign flags at YOUR city hall! 

Our green globalist Prime Minister Mark Carney holds three passports – that we know of. Appropriate for one of the international architects of the global Net Zero scam, an ideology that is pursued enthusiastically by virtually every municipality in Canada (with encouragement from Trudeau’s and now Carney’s government).

As a reminder, Net Zero means offsetting the amount of carbon dioxide a nation emits through measures such as buying e-credits or removing it from the atmosphere through “carbon capture technology.” However, since carbon credits aren’t real and carbon capture is an expensive boondoggle, in practice, Net Zero demands slashing emissions to near-zero levels through drastic measures: phasing out fossil fuels, substituting costly and unreliable “renewables” like wind and solar, and imposing various types of mandates on consumers. 

(Wonder why there is still no new pipeline approved?)

Net Zero in Europe

Net Zero constitutes a radical restructuring not just of energy systems, but of the global economy.

Net Zero’s pitfalls are evident across Europe, one of Mark Carney’s home bases, where aggressive implementation has triggered an alarming number of energy crises. Germany’s infamous Energiewende (or “energy transition”) policy program is perhaps the most well-known example. The goal of Energiewende was to clamp down on the usage of traditional energy sources – oil, natural gas, even nuclear power – creating artificial energy scarcity, with the expectation that (heavily subsidized) wind and solar would step in and fill the void.

Consequently, the cost of electricity soared, such that Germans now pay the highest prices in the EU. This has contributed to deindustrialization, with major companies like Mercedes-Benz shifting production to Hungary, whose energy rates are 70% lower than Germany’s.

Even with higher rates, wind and solar can’t really power the entire grid of a country of 80 million people, so, in recent years, Germany became increasingly dependent on imported Russian fossil fuels to fill in the gaps. When the War in Ukraine made that untenable, the government decided on a shocking course of action – to resume burning coal just to keep the lights on, while maintaining their fantastical belief that wind and solar are the way of the future.

Germany is far from the only country brought low by Net Zero groupthink. In Great Britain, another of Carney’s countries, where he also served as central banker from 2013 to 2020, Net Zero by 2050 targets were legally mandated by the then-governing Conservative Party in 2019. But the currently governing Labour Party has gone even further, embracing Net Zero with a religious mania.

Chief among the green maniacs is Ed Miliband, Secretary of Energy Security and Net Zero. Miliband has declared that “the transition [to Net Zero] is unstoppable, [though] we need to make it move faster.” He gave himself the task of picking up the national pace, setting a goal of decarbonizing the U.K.’s electrical grid by 95% by the year 2030.

To that end, the government has invested heavily in wind and solar, while banning new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea. They’ve also moved up the timeline for banning new gas-powered cars in the country from 2035 to 2030. In less than four years, British drivers will effectively be forced into electric vehicles – whether they want them or not.

Predictably, British electricity rates are rapidly catching up to Germany’s. With a bit more time, and a bit more of the Labour government’s radical green policies, they will surely have the highest energy rates in the developed world. 

Other British Net Zero insanities include the U.K. Climate Change Committee’s continual over-the-top recommendations to parliament, including that they adopt policies which will reduce meat and dairy consumption by up to 50% by 2050, and reduce air travel, perhaps through a “frequent flyer levy.” No more pleasure travel for the British hoi polloi!

No wonder that Prime Minister Keir Starmer had to admit recently that popular backing for Net Zero had “broken down.”

The UK has become increasingly reliant on electricity imported from other European nations, despite Miliband’s constant claim that Net Zero will make the U.K. energy self-sufficient. But because the Net Zero mind virus is catching, it isn’t a sure thing that electricity will always be there to import. Just last year, Spain and Portugal experienced among the worst blackouts in Europe in decades, with an estimated 60 million people losing power. This occurred just days after Spain had bragged that it had successfully run their grid on 100% “green” energy for a short period of time.

PM Carney was, as noted, the Governor of the Bank of England. He was then and remains a leader in this European Net Zero cult. Let’s admit it, though, we all have friends who say that Mark Carney is “ok” because he is “some sort of conservative.” 

Don’t fall for this nonsense. And take action.

This year, voters in six provinces and one territory in Canada will be electing new politicians at the local level. It’s time to wake up and get involved and elect some municipal leaders who will fight Carney’s Net Zero insanity in our cities and towns, instead of promoting it. 

Canadian municipalities have been pushing the radical green Net Zero scam since well before Carney became Prime Minister. I wrote last year about how municipalities push the Net Zero agenda and will expand further in the coming months. But how have more senior levels of government – the ones that plow billions down to the municipal level – been involved in promoting Net Zero ideology? 

Net Zero and the Canadian Governing Class

Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approach to Net Zero was overt: his first big step, in 2016, was mandating that every province have some sort of carbon tax by 2018. He mandated Net Zero by 2050 into law in 2021, including emissions caps, anti-pipeline legislation like Bill C-69, dubbed the “no more pipelines act,” and Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. At one point, even the Conservative Party of Canada’s leader, Erin O’Toole, was duped into promoting the idea of the carbon tax.

Since coming into office, Mark Carney has retained the lion’s share of Trudeau’s Net Zero madness, albeit with a more subtle bait-and-switch approach. The most conspicuous example was the scrapping of the consumer carbon tax while hiking the industrial version, so that consumers pay indirectly, through higher costs.

Carney signed an agreement in November 2025 with Alberta’s Premier Danielle Smith which theoretically offers that province a single new pipeline (which might never get built) and in exchange Alberta had to accept the federal Industrial Carbon Tax, fully commit to Net Zero by 2050, and further agree to spending a ton of money on carbon capture and storage. 

So where is this pipeline? Where is it even being seriously discussed? There’s no project description, no environmental review, and no private-sector partner. It exists only as a bargaining chip – useful for selling a deal, useless for moving a single barrel of oil; in other words, still no pipeline.

Most recently, Carney replaced the federal electric vehicle (EV) mandate, which banned the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, with new tailpipe emissions standards demanding a 75% reduction by 2035 and 90% by 2040. Such stringent cuts constitute an EV mandate in all but name, since only EVs can realistically comply with them.

ONTARIO

Net Zero isn’t only a federal preoccupation. All of the provincial governments are complicit in the Net Zero scam.  And Doug Ford’s Ontario has become the poster child for provincial Net Zero fantasies.

Though Ford came into office in 2018 pledging to fix the energy mess his Liberal predecessors had left him, wind and solar today still – today, in 2026! – comprise a larger share of Ontario’s energy grid than they did eight years ago, his so-called “conservative” government plans to double wind and solar capacity over the next decade. The Ontario government is already spending billions of dollars per year of taxpayer money to subsidize electricity rates, hiding the true cost of electricity from Ontarians while ballooning provincial debt. In a province already grappling with some of North America’s highest power prices, this expansion risks repeating those past Liberal mistakes by prioritizing intermittent renewables over more reliable, affordable, and secure options, ultimately hitting households and businesses hardest. 

MUNICIPAL NET ZERO

Net Zero nonsense has filtered steadily downward not only into provincial policy but, most quietly of all, into municipal “climate emergency” declarations across the country. City councils from coast to coast have embedded Net Zero targets into long-term strategic plans, infrastructure priorities, building codes, and procurement rules, often with little public scrutiny and even less debate about cost. 

These municipal commitments are presented as morally unquestionable and technically inevitable. They are neither. They are expensive policy choices that will shape land use, housing affordability, transportation systems, and local tax burdens for decades. Net Zero’s municipal incarnation risks hardwiring those consequences directly into the daily lives of Canadian families. The cliff edge may be national in rhetoric, but the pain felt as a result will be local.

In the end, Net Zero is nothing less than economic self-sabotage dressed up as virtue. Our weakling and virtue-signalling municipalities have either signed on to this Net Zero with great enthusiasm, in some cases, or have, at the very least, completely caved into the pressure from higher levels of government.  Shame on them.

A year has passed since devastating fires ravaged Los Angeles, scorching over 57,000 acres, destroying more than 18,000 structures, and claiming at least thirty-one lives. 

Shortly after the flames subsided, I wrote about how the catastrophe was not primarily a “climate emergency,” as LA officials hastily proclaimed and the media faithfully parroted; rather, the catastrophe was a glaring example of municipal and state governance failures. 

One year on, further investigations reveal that my initial criticisms – and the observations of impartial American journalists – have not only been vindicated but amplified. 

What we saw in real-time – budget cuts crippling the fire department, empty reservoirs leaving hydrants dry, and woke leaders like Mayor Karen Bass prioritizing DEI deflection over fire-fighting action – has morphed into a full-blown scandal of incompetence.

It’s now clear that what happened in LA was a preventable disaster exacerbated by officials who put virtue-signalling and woke ideology above the public interest.

The empty reservoirs and dry hydrants, for instance, which turned a bad situation into a catastrophe, can be laid at the feet of Bass’s “diversity hire” administration and her progressive predecessors. 

As I noted originally, nearby three-million-gallon water tanks were quickly depleted, while the distant 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir ran dry, forcing firefighters to rely on tanker trucks instead of dependable hydrants. A year later, it’s clear this was no fluke but the product of chronic neglect: the Santa Ynez Reservoir – holding forty times the capacity of the failed tanks – had been offline for months for what officials described as “minor repairs.”

These repairs were overseen by a woman named Janisse Quiñones, CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Quiñones is a proud leftist who proclaimed, at the time of her 2024 appointment by Mayor Bass, that her role was about “righting the wrongs that we’ve done in the past.” 

It’s unclear exactly how her promise to use “an equity lens and social justice” to manage infrastructure was supposed to work but we know that she supported aggressive renewable energy and local water-sourcing targets, framing them as part of correcting environmentally harmful legacy systems. All the woke buzzwords, but not much about actually managing the water supply!

Quiñones was paid $750,000 per year, a salary proposed by Bass – nearly double what her predecessor had made. No doubt those extra few hundred thousand were for “righting” those historical “wrongs!”

Perhaps the least surprising revelation is that this wasn’t some inevitable climate-fueled inferno, as was widely claimed at the time. It was arson. A federal indictment unsealed in 2025 charged one man with maliciously starting the initial brush fire on New Year’s Eve in Topanga State Park, which got out of control, was beaten back by the fire department, only to later rekindle into the Palisades blaze.

This undercuts the knee-jerk “climate emergency” rhetoric from officials and media, shifting the focus squarely to why what started originally as a minor, containable fire wasn’t fully extinguished. 

According to City Journal’s Shawn Regan, “Not only was the Palisades Fire entirely preventable, the evidence suggests; it was also fueled by California state policies that, in the words of one attorney representing fire victims, “put plants over people.”’

Regan and others have documented how California’s Wildfire Management Plan for Topanga State Park prioritized protecting rare plant-life and Native archaeological sites over aggressive firefighting. Though firefighters contained the initial eight-acre fire relatively quickly, they were barred from full mop-up operations – no heavy equipment, no retardant, and as little soil disturbance as possible.

Fire victims’ lawyers unearthed one text message in which an LAFD supervisor was asked whether they should deploy bulldozers to stop the spread of the initial fire. He responded, “Heck no that area is full of endangered plants. I would be a real idiot to ever put a dozer in that area.”

The fire was left to smoulder. Park Rangers and local hikers have testified that they saw smoke and other signs that the fire was not contained, but the site went unmonitored for six days.

In short, DEI and woke hiring practices, along with eco-zealotry and plain old incompetence, managed to turn a minor arson incident into a raging inferno.

This saga should serve as an urgent wake-up call to municipalities everywhere: prioritize raw competence above all else when electing or appointing leaders to positions of public trust. 

When officials chase “woke” ideas – whether it’s diverting resources to DEI programs over disaster preparedness, prioritizing endangered plants over human lives and property, or indulging in climate virtue-signalling instead of maintaining basic infrastructure – they don’t just fail, they actively betray the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect. 

Los Angeles stands as a tragic exhibit of how thoroughly institutions captured by the woke, green left-wing will sacrifice the actual public good in a heartbeat when ideology trumps duty. The results, in this case, are death, destruction, and ruin.

Voters, take note and act: demand competence, accountability, and a relentless focus on the basics over empty ideology, identity politics, or progressive posturing. Hold your leaders to that standard, or the next time a crisis hits, it might be your house that goes up in flames.

Municipal Watch readers have likely seen the excellent news out of Calgary. In December of 2025, soon after Alberta’s municipal elections, the new Calgary city council made a smart, straightforward decision: no more foreign flags flying at City Hall. In a tight 8-7 vote, city councillors, led by the newly-elected Mayor Jeromy Farkas, decided that only the flags of Canada, Alberta, and Calgary itself would be allowed to fly at Calgary city hall. 

Soon after his election, Mayor Farkas questioned the policy that allowed flags of any federally recognized nation to be raised at city hall. As the Carney Liberal government in Ottawa had only a month earlier recognized Palestine, it was no surprise that requests to fly the Palestinian flag immediately followed. Mayor Farkas argued these flag-raisings, meant to celebrate something called “diversity,” were now just stirring up division, protests, and extra security headaches. 

Bottom line? Calgary banned the city hall’s involvement with any flags other than the national, provincial and municipal flags. This was a win for common sense. Flags matter. They’re powerful symbols of loyalty and unity, not just decorations. 

Great move, Calgary! 

Here’s hoping more cities across Canada ban foreign flags from public squares.

I mention the situation in Calgary again because it highlights the importance of electing common-sense representatives to the municipal level of government. There was never any chance that a measure this symbolically significant would have ever passed under the council led by former Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek. Thankfully, Calgary voters threw Gondek out in the October 2025 election, elected 10 new councillors to the 14-person city council, replacing the 8 who retired and the two incumbents who were defeated, and resulting in (if the foreign flag vote is an early indication!) a much higher quality bunch of city councillors. 

What about your city or town? Is a refresh needed? New blood? Fresh faces? A bit more common sense? When will be the next opportunity for you to pass judgement – and vote! – on your mayor and councillors?

Millions of Canadians will have their chance to vote in a local election this year, in 2026!

Here are the provinces (and one territory) that will be electing new municipal governments this year, 2026: 

• New Brunswick: May 11
• British Columbia: October 17
• Ontario: October 26
• Manitoba: October 28
• Prince Edward Island: November 2
• Saskatchewan: November 8/9
• Northwest Territories: December 14

With respect, I suggest now is the time for sensible people to start giving some thought to our local government. It’s time to ask ourselves the common-sense questions, in particular: after the votes have been counted and the results are in, will my local municipal council have a mayor or, at least, a majority of councillors, with the courage to stand up to the woke, virtue-signalling mob on issues such as banning foreign flags on municipal property?

Yes, I recognize that the foreign flag issue is merely “symbolic” and, yes, there are surely “more important issues” to be discussed. Indeed, if you have been following my blog posts this year, you will have read about some of them: climate alarmism, oil & gas advertising bans, the dangers of Net Zero, electric vehicle mandates, the War on the Car, and other extreme green left environmental policies, for example. 

But, make no mistake, the symbolism of the foreign flag ban is indeed powerful.  Local councillors who aren’t prepared to vote the right way on such a simple issue are very likely going to be “woke” and extremist on a whole host of other issues.

And, so, VOTERS, I implore you to take note and act: demand competence, accountability, and a relentless focus on the basics. Let’s make sure we hold our leaders to that standard on every issue, large and “small.”

We must not waste this huge opportunity! For most Canadians, 2026 represents the most tangible chance to influence politics where it matters most: at the local level.

The city of Calgary has just enacted a new policy which should make municipalities across Canada sit up and take notice.

For some background… shortly after his October 2025 election, rookie Calgary mayor Jeromy Farkas called for the city to amend its flag policy of allowing non-Canadian national flags to be raised at City Hall.

The old policy stated that foreign flags could be flown at City Hall provided they were from countries recognized by the Canadian federal government. 

That list of countries became a bit more controversial this past September, when Canada became the first G7 country to recognize the State of Palestine.

Almost immediately, supporters of Palestine and the terrorist group Hamas, which governs Gaza, requested the flying of the Palestinian flag at Calgary City Hall on November 15^th, a mere three weeks after the local election.

Newly elected Mayor Farkas rightly argued that the practice of “national flag-raisings,” which had been intended as celebrations of the community’s unity in diversity, were “now creating division,” and should be ended. 

Farkas called for an “urgent notice of motion” vote to be taken by the almost entirely new slate of councillors. If passed, this last-minute motion would have allowed for a debate on this issue. The vote was held on November 18 and was defeated by a razor thin margin of 8-7. The result? Farkas’s new “foreign flag” ban was not allowed to be placed on the agenda for debate. 

But that wasn’t the end of the story. Mayor Farkas persisted, and he perhaps even did some campaigning behind the scenes. 

In early December, Ward 13 Counselor Dan McLean filed a formal motion to amend the city’s flag policy such that only flags representing Canada, Alberta, and Calgary itself could be flown.

For the record, the motion read, in part:

“The display of national flags at city hall, while originally intended as a gesture of respect and cultural recognition, has increasingly become a focal point for demonstrations, counter-demonstrations and heightened security concerns…. Discontinuing the practice of flying national flags is consistent with the city’s responsibility to prioritize local community harmony and protect the municipal complex as a place for all Calgarians.”

The motion also mentioned the importance of avoiding any “perceived alignment” between the City of Calgary and any foreign government.

The motion to change the flag policy came to a vote on December 15. With Councillor John Pantazopoulos switching his earlier “no” vote to a “yes” in support of the foreign flag ban, the motion backed by Mayor Farkas passed by a single vote.

The final 8-7 vote tally broke down as follows:

In favour – Mayor Jeromy Farkas, Councillors Dan McLean, Andre Chabot, Kim Tyers, Rob Ward, Mike Jamieson, Landon Johnston, and John Pantazopoulos.

Opposed – Councillors Nathaniel Schmidt, Jennifer Wyness, Raj Dhaliwal, Myke Atkinson, D.J. Kelly, Harrison Clark, and Andrew Yule.

Now, perhaps a few readers will agree with Ward 5 councillor Raj Dhaliwal, who, arguing (and voting) against the motion, said, “We got better things to do. We shouldn’t be fighting over flags.”

This is typically the sort of argument that politicians make when they oppose the principle of an issue, for one reason or another, and don’t want to take a stand, or even have a discussion. 

Perhaps, to them, a flag might just be a brightly coloured adornment, useful mainly as a reminder of which airport in which they’re currently changing planes as they jet off to Davos. And among those who have characterized the issue as “not a priority,” that stance may also reflect a degree of alignment or sympathy with the cause the flag represents, rather than simple indifference.

But flags, as symbols, do matter, and the rest of us know that flags are sacred symbols of national unity. 

Flags are not decorations, they are declarations. And when a city hall starts hoisting dozens of them from all over the world, that city is no longer neutral ground. It has become a battlefield of competing loyalties.

The beauty of Mayor Farkas’s new policy is its ruthless clarity: City Hall will fly the flags that belong to all Calgarians – those of the city, of Alberta, and of Canada – full stop.

As Farkas himself put it, “Flying flags of other nations at a time of such incredible geopolitical tumult doesn’t send the right signal. We need to be here for absolutely every single community in Calgary, and being pulled into some of the geopolitical challenges that are happening around the world only makes public spaces like City Hall less safe.”

Bravo, Mayor Farkas!

Letting every diaspora group plant its colours on public flagpoles doesn’t celebrate diversity – it imports division and pretends the price tag is zero, all the while trying to make some sort of international statement.

Calgary’s old policy, and similar ones in municipalities across this country, were born in an era of “diversity is our strength” feel-good optics. These virtue-signaling policies have now become a liability in a world of imported tensions.

In forcing, and then winning, this battle over foreign flags in Calgary, Mayor Farkas deserves a lot of credit. 

Calgary’s new mayor lit a path for every other municipality whose residents are tired of being dragged into political conflicts they didn’t start and cannot finish. City halls across the land should be places where everyone feels at home under the flags that unite us.

At Municipal Watch, one of our wishes for 2026 is that other municipalities across Canada will follow suit and ban the practice of flying foreign flags.

The war on the car (aka the war on drivers) just suffered an important defeat, and in Ontario of all places!  

No, Ontario has not (yet!) lifted its support for electric vehicle (EV) foolishness; in fact, Doug Ford reconfirmed his irresponsible pledge to EVs during the provincial election earlier this year. “I want to make it clear to every partner we have in Ontario’s electric vehicle and battery supply chain: a re-elected PC government will honour our commitment to invest in the sector,” he declared obstinately. How terribly short-sighted.

But, in a victory for Ontario drivers, the Progressive Conservative majority government in the Ontario legislature just passed a law that severely curtails municipal governments in that province from hounding drivers through an insidious and unfair “high-tech” tax: speed cameras.

Yes indeed, those annoying municipal speed cameras (also known as “automated speed enforcement” or ASE) were banned by Bill 56 and took effect just last week, on November 14, 2025.

Was the government of Ontario justified in banning its municipal governments from this cash-grabbing device? 

Absolutely, yes. 

These cameras turn every commute into a risk of penalties, and every driver into a potential ticket target. While school zone protection should be a top priority for municipalities, the function creep of cameras in suburban 30 or 40 km/h zones hints at something more: driving as a regulated gamble rather than a right. Ontario’s decision helps push back.

Across several Ontario jurisdictions, the number of tickets issued by speed cameras has soared. When Torontonians heard that one single camera in Toronto alone generated 70,000 tickets and more than $7 million in fines, it’s easy to see why Premier Ford’s “cash grab” accusation resonated with many drivers.

If these devices were primarily about stopping speeding, wouldn’t the number of infractions go down over time, not keep climbing? 

Yet that’s exactly what has happened. Instead of a decline in offences, even more tickets were issued, and municipalities continued to collect more revenue. So, do these cameras work, or are they simply a device for local governments to increase revenue under the guise of road safety?

Municipalities claim that yes, the cameras worked, with studies showing speed reductions when the cameras were in place, as some local reports proclaim drops of 15 km/h or more in average speeds. 

But that’s only one side of the story. 

A camera might slow drivers in its immediate vicinity, but what happens a few blocks ahead or a few days later? Some reports indicated the effect was limited to the camera zone and, as soon as the camera location was passed, the lead-foot driver continued speeding. Without broader data showing overall driver behaviour change, we’re left with weak, cherry-picked “wins.”

There was also the murky issue of “hidden thresholds” for fines. Most municipalities quietly decided how far over the limit a driver could go before a camera actually issued a ticket—but they didn’t tell us what that threshold was. It might have been 8 km/h in one neighbourhood and 12 km/h in another, depending on how hungry city hall was for revenue that month. That secrecy contributed to the lack of public trust. If these cameras were truly about safety, why the mystery? The only logical conclusion is that the thresholds were being tweaked to maximize ticket revenue, not to protect pedestrians.

Rotating camera locations and limited signage also gave us the sense that enforcement was less about deterrence and more about revenue. Overall, this sounds more like “gotcha zone” than “safe zone”.

The province’s curtailing of these programs sends a clear message: enforcement should support safety, not fuel municipal budgets. At a time when cost of living and affordability are top of mind for most Canadians, it sends a strong message that local governments should not rely on speeding tickets as a funding stream.

The safety conversation should be about long-lasting, evidence-based approaches that calm traffic and make streets safer for everyone – with a focus on design and infrastructure improvements that naturally encourage safer driving. Built-in solutions that are durable and engineering-focused will offer a far more lasting impact than the fleeting and temporary impact of speed cameras.

Municipalities must do better than lazy and greedy cash grabs like this one.  Relying on cameras is the lazy route. It says: we won’t fix the road, we’ll just penalize the driver. Meanwhile, school zones, seniors’ areas, and transit corridors deserve safety upgrades, not surprise tickets.

The current government of Ontario has been a huge disappointment for those of us who believe in smaller government, personal liberty, transparency and accountability, and the principle that politicians should keep the promises that they make.

But we should give credit where it’s due. On the issue of speed cameras, Ontario has stepped up and signalled that municipal enforcement must be about safety, not fundraising.

Now municipalities must respond, not with defiance, but with action. Make movement safe for all, without turning camera flashes into cash cows.

Because if speed enforcement becomes just another revenue stream, we, the drivers, lose more than money, we lose trust. And in public-safety policy, trust is everything.

In part one of this blog post, we looked at how municipalities have spent decades waging their quiet war on the car. Now, the big guns from higher levels of government are actively involved in the WOTC, through a most ingenious Net Zero policy: Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates. 

What do EVs have to do with the WOTC, you ask? After all, EVs are still “cars,” aren’t they? The answer can be found in the powerful economic principle of the law of supply and demand. 

For decades, the WOTC has focused on reducing the demand for cars by irritating drivers and making driving inconvenient or unpleasant – using the same propaganda playbook as outlined in part one of this blogpost, where we explored how municipalities have tried to shame people for using and enjoying their cars.

The demand for cars kept increasing, though.

In the 1970s, the shaming got underway in earnest. The Green Left prophesied about the impending global shortage of gasoline (derived from oil, of which we were allegedly running short). These predictions were, of course, wrong and by the 1980s, we instead experienced an oil glut. Some then complained about leaded gasoline, but unleaded gasoline and improved technology took care of that concern.

Then they tried to guilt us by saying that the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile – even with unleaded gasoline – was still destroying the planet, and so they invented the fiction that electric vehicles were cleaner by magnitudes. But that ignores a simple truth: most of the world’s electricity still comes from hydrocarbons – oil, gas, and coal – so EVs are hardly “emission-free.” 

The population continued to increase and so did the demand for more cars. In Canada, the number of registered vehicles has more than tripled since the 1960s from 8 million to 26 million in 2023 – 3.4% of which are zero-emission vehicles. 

Some upper-middle-class virtue-signallers did eagerly snap up the taxpayer-funded “rebate” subsidies for their more expensive EVs before they ran out (to make the virtue-signalling a little less painful, but also, well, a little less virtuous). Minus incentives, however, few people were swayed by the pure and simple temptation to virtue-signal through EV ownership.

In other words, everyday Canadians haven’t been buying-in – not into the propaganda, and not into EVs.

While governments here in Canada, the USA, and abroad have been spending billions to subsidize the manufacture of these EVs, taxpayer-subsidized efforts still haven’t been able to get the price down low enough to attract working families to buy them. Nor have they been able to guilt citizens into simply paying more for an EV so they can show their neighbours just how good and “virtuous” they truly are!

So the Green Left and their partners in government have recently shifted to the supply side of the equation instead. 

Attempts to guilt or pressure drivers into buying electric vehicles (EVs) have failed. Demand for ICE vehicles remains strong, so lawmakers and the Green Left have shifted tactics, now aiming to reduce the overall supply of cars instead.

The federal Liberal government remains fixated on its Net Zero agenda, clinging to the Trudeau-era policy that, by 2035, 100% of vehicles sold in Canada must be electric. Even though Prime Minister Carney announced in early September a supposed “review” of the EV mandate and a temporary pause on the 20%-by-2026 sales target, make no mistake, the Carney Liberal government is still fully committed to the 60%-by-2030 and 100%-by-2035 targets. 

The Liberals’ aggressive plan to force Canadians into EVs through mandates is more than mere virtue-signalling, it’s fundamentally unachievable. There is simply no realistic scenario – by 2026, 2030, 2050, or ever – where enough EVs could be built to meet the current and projected demand for automobiles in North America.

The Liberal government and their Green Left allies in municipalities across Canada know this perfectly well. But here’s the twist: it’s not a flaw in the plan. It is the plan.

By making EVs scarce and pushing gas-powered cars off the market, they’re creating a future with fewer cars, fewer drivers, and less freedom of movement.

Maybe that’s been the goal all along.

Remember the “war on the car”?

For decades, municipalities around the world have been waging a relentless war on cars and their drivers. The left, including but not limited to the green left, claims this war is in defense of the environment. But they also seem to dislike the many benefits of automobiles – comfort, convenience, personal safety, economic growth, freedom, support for families, individual flourishing, and so on.

But how have they been conducting this war on the car (WOTC)?

London is famous for its £15 per day congestion pricing and Ultra Low Emission Zones (ULEZ). Numerous other large cities have experimented with various parking restrictions, including “car-free zones,” “no-drive days,” Electronic Road Pricing, and Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods. And then there is the Orwellian “15-minute city,” perhaps the ultimate municipal WOTC move.

Here in Canada, and elsewhere, an especially punitive tactic of the WOTC has been led by municipalities building Light Rail Transit (LRTs). The urban and suburban left have been pushing these above-ground electric trains, which invariably make for more traffic congestion on key thoroughfares. Ask drivers in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Mississauga, Brampton, Toronto, and Ottawa about these over-priced and under-used congestion-creating monsters. Drivers who succumb and attempt to use transit instead of their cars are often rewarded by crowding, delays and breakdowns. Ottawa’s LRT has been notorious for its unreliability, especially in winter.

And let’s not forget the municipally mandated and now ubiquitous bike lanes. In Toronto, the issue ended up in court after the Ontario government attempted to remove bike lanes from just two heavily clogged arteries. Recently, an Ontario Superior Court of Justice determined that the government’s plan to remove the bike lanes was, incredibly, unconstitutional. The Ontario government promptly appealed this decision, so we await the final word as to whether this will ultimately be a victory for the anti-car movement and its zealotry to make it tougher to drive in Toronto.

The Toronto Star recently devoted an entire column to talking drivers out of their cars, encouraging folks to join the “car-free movement” (is that a thing?) and adopt a more enlightened “mindset” to car ownership. I gather this involves a lot of walking, cycling, ridesharing and even a passing suggestion to offset costs by taking on deliveries. (Is the Star recruiting for Amazon now?)

The condescending tone doesn’t stop there. If you cannot adopt a “car-free mindset,” the Star offers this handy advice for drivers: remove shoes from your trunk and back seat to reduce drag, and shop around for better car insurance rates. (The Star seems unaware of the common practice of keeping a bag of salt or kitty litter in the back to improve winter traction.) Has the “personal finance reporter” who authored this article ever met any average Canadians? Intelligent people who manage their finances responsibly and make informed decisions every day on how to save and spend their own money?

There’s no doubt that a car-free lifestyle is possible and perhaps not too painful if one resides in a dense, urban setting, works from home, and lives a simple lifestyle. Many Torontonians, and perhaps even Calgarians and Vancouverites who reside in the city centre, can use public transit, Uber, walk to get where they need to go, and rent a car for longer trips outside the city. Cars aren’t a luxury for millions of Canadians, however. They are the foundation of livelihoods and lifelines for maintaining a decent quality of life, enabling individuals to keep their jobs, support their families, care for loved ones, and participate fully in their communities.

Recently, the Toronto Sun reported on something called Build Toronto, ostensibly a group of local residents who “spotlight bold ideas” such as charging a toll of $10 to $15 each time a car enters the city. “A sin tax on human mobility” is what 2023 Toronto mayoralty candidate Anthony Furey calls it.

Author Joe Warmington correctly labels it “a congestion tax to fund green ideology,” which will hurt those with lower incomes much more than the ones who can afford Teslas, live in the city, and only enter it when they’re returning home from a weekend at their cottage in Muskoka.

Speaking of Teslas, my next column will argue that the electric vehicle “craze” – if you can call it that – embodies a malicious and powerful escalation of the WOTC. Stay tuned.

Would it surprise you to learn that, for over a generation, one of the main ways the federal Liberals have been promoting their radical green agenda has been through a clever scheme that bypasses the legitimate authority of provincial governments? A scheme that uses a national lobby-type organization to do a total end-run around the provinces, which have full jurisdiction over municipalities in Canada?  A scheme also designed to completely elude the sort of public scrutiny that is expected of governments when dolling out billions of dollars, often to their friends and allies? This scheme has been ruthlessly, efficiently, and ingeniously executed by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM). And, while not technically considered “money-laundering,” it is certainly designed to obscure accountability and further the Liberal anti-hydrocarbon, pro-Net Zero agenda – even during off-years when the Liberals are not in power. 

Over the years, municipalities – particularly the large cities – across Canada have banded together to lobby the federal government for money, even though the federal government has no jurisdiction over or responsibility for Canadian municipalities. Their lobby group is FCM, which has been operating in different forms and under different names for over a century. 

For decades, FCM has not only operated as a lobby organization but has become the principal delivery mechanism for successive (Liberal) federal governments to promote and execute the Liberal anti-growth “climate agenda” at the municipal level. Ottawa’s employment of FCM serves to enable a total lack of transparency and accountability, to distribute of billions of federal tax dollars (all in the cause of propagandizing the Liberals green ideology), and to implement its radical green agenda.

And it can all be traced back to the Rio “Earth Summit.”

Remember the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)? It was the UN “treaty” that started the climate madness that has been threatening much of the Canadian economy since it was first signed in 1992, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the “Earth Summit.” The goal of the Rio Earth Summit was the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [i.e. human-caused] interference with the climate system.”  The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Accord of 2015 were built on the ideological and political foundations of the Rio Earth Summit.

In the build-up to the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, in September of 1990, the World Congress of Local Governments for a Sustainable Future was held at the UN in New York City. There, representatives of 200 municipalities established the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), now called Local Governments for Sustainability.  From its beginning, this group was committed to a climate alarmist agenda. 

In 1993, working with FCM from its Toronto global headquarters, ICLEI expanded its reach and launched the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) campaign. For over three decades, the FCM/ICLEI partnership has directed municipalities, through the Partners in Climate Protection (PCP) program, in creating local climate plans and designing climate policies, by providing guidelines, templates, and advice. 

The ICLEI/FCM program was one of the earliest municipal-level climate programs in Canada. Once the green left had established the infrastructure of ICLEI, then matched it with the long-established FCM, they were in position to act as a front for a green-friendly government. Enter the newly elected (1993) Liberal government of Jean Chrétien, which had its own green agenda. His Liberal government signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and went about looking for ways to meet the associated targets. FCM’s claim that municipalities were responsible for over 50% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (mainly through transportation, buildings, and waste) must have resonated with a federal government that wanted to look like it was actively working to meet its Kyoto goals. 

As the Kyoto Protocol was heating up politically, FCM/ICLEI received a huge cash infusion in 2000 from the Chretien government to manage the new Green Municipal Fund. This new program was administered from the start by FCM with an initial endowment of $125 million to create a perpetual fund for municipal green innovation. In its dying days, five years later, the Paul Martin Liberal government made an additional contribution of $550 million.

By contrast, FCM did not receive federal funds from the Harper-led Conservative government. The FCM Green Municipal Fund continued to operate using its Liberal-era funding but did not receive any more money to administer programs, environmental or otherwise. The Conservative government did not outsource its work to FCM, choosing instead to work directly with municipalities and provinces with a $735 million Green Infrastructure Program. Ideological, practical, and political considerations (like the 2008-9 financial crisis) changed the slant of these green programs to focus on economic stimulus and job creation as well as environmental mitigation and adaptation.

These FCM Green Municipal Fund dry years came to an end with the end of the Harper government in 2015. In the Trudeau years that followed (2015-2025), the green-focused, Paris Accord-addicted Liberals flooded FCM with additional hundreds of millions of dollars – like the $1 billion committed in the 2019 Liberal budget and the additional $530 million which the Trudeau government gave FCM for the Local Leadership for Climate Adaptation (LLCA) in 2024.

The billions funnelled through ICLEI and FCM serve to reinforce the growing economic malaise felt by Canadians everywhere, raise the cost of living and do little to address serious municipal matters – like housing shortages and rising property taxes. Canadians struggling to make ends meet deserve to know about this scheme, perpetrated on them by federal Liberal governments, that promotes their own costly and radical Net Zero green agenda through municipalities, bypassing legitimate provincial authority, and using federal taxpayer dollars – all with the assistance of a powerful, well-funded intermediary. 

Next up: With so much money flowing their way, what has the FCM done with this largesse? How have they spent the money?