Canadian Current - FCM Conference
FCM Conferences: a pathway to establish rapport with local governments
Report to KICLEI, 14th June 2024, by SR
ANALYSIS
Perhaps Margaret Fong said it best last week after speaking with delegates in Calgary attending the FCM Annual Conference and Trade Show.
The FCM is a lobby group, by which she means:
whatever its origins, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has become a platform through which the federal government lobbies municipalities, offering them funds which require them to enter into obligations requiring certain outcomes (vague as their descriptions may be, pertaining to resilience and sustainability) and timelines.
While the FCM claims to be the national voice of local and regional governments, it is also the voice of Justin Trudeau, Agenda 21 and––to use more up to date Climate Action rhetoric––the “Journey to 2050.”
Therefore, how entirely fitting of Justin Trudeau to fly direct from Europe to the conference here in Calgary, where he acknowledged transparently that he is trying to go around the Constitution by dealing directly with municipalities and circumventing the provincial order of government.
The question and answer period which followed Justin’s sermon on sustainability––which included his incredulous claim that eighty per cent of Canadian families will come out ahead as a result of carbon taxation––demonstrated a very cozy relationship between the prime minister and his preferred Q&A facilitator, Jack Savage the Mayor of Halifax.
Justin complimented Halifax for having shown the right amount of “ambition” in densification schemes putting eight family units on single lots. This appears to be the gold standard of an agenda which evidently seeks to urbanize all of Canada, and not by expanding city limits into our nation’s natural asset of vast green fields, but rather by concentrating populations in established, inner city neighbourhoods. This will be accomplished, taking Justin’s ambitious standard at face value, by urging residents into districts the population density of which will be multiplied by a factor of eight.
That said, it would be a simplification to suggest that the 3,100 delegations attending this year’s FCM conference came to bask in the glory of Justin Trudeau and to regurgitate the foggy language of both Climate Action and its alleged underpinning science, so called “Climate Change Theory.” As one who stood just outside the frosted glass doors of the McLeod Conference room this Friday past, my read on the intermittent applause accompanying the salient points of Justin’s sermon on federal intrusion and sustainability is that it constituted a minority of the audience.
In other words, FCM conferences serve other purposes for the delegates.
The Mayor of Princeton came to confront a visiting federal minister of infrastructure over the matter of Justin Trudeau denying Princeton funding for improving a perimeter dyke around this mining town in the BC interior which, along with Merritt in 2021, suffered as a result of flooding. Justin did fly out to British Columbia during the flood for a photo op and then declared later to parliament that he had the backs of these residents of a flooded interior––and later Justin did, however, turn his backs on them.
The feds replied to Princeton’s 800 page application for disaster relief with a single statement:
this did not include the information we were looking for.
The Reeve of Elie MB also attended the conference for similar reasons––and none of them had anything to do with buying into the “dreamy and fluffy” goals of sustainability, such as constructing “green buildings.” The Reeve came to this conference to network with other reeves and mayors of rural towns who therefore face similar challenges. She also hoped to tell the prime minister that funding rural town infrastructure on the basis of population was insufficient:
a town may be small in population, but “vast” in space, requiring therefore more infrastructure than an urban community of similar population.
Now whether a delegate demonstrates a firm belief in the reality of “Climate Change” or on the other hand expresses cynicism, as did the Reeve of Elie, regarding the seemingly impossible goals of “zero net energy” constructions, what remains true for the councilors, reeve or mayors with whom I conversed during this FCM Conference is that they are amenable to dialogue.
Whatever we make of Climate Change Theory––and for what it is worth, I do not believe it exists as science, but rather as generic language, newspaper headlines, non-zeroized graphs, anonymous “studies,” correlations between temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations [entirely absent of what a valid science would have by now formulated: thermodynamic equations quantifying and ordering the alleged process by which CO2(g) acts as the master thermostat for the earth system]––I remain convinced that the best strategy in confronting Agenda 21 and its equivalents is the one demonstrated by KICLEI:
go to the policy arcs themselves and discuss the impractical goals and harmful impacts.
Furthermore, listening to the delegates and giving them time to express their overarching concerns––which will certainly pertain to their municipal space and its specific challenges––will give us a chance to establish common ground by expressing empathy.
I missed this opportunity with the Mayor of Yorkton SK. In this early interview, I failed to respond proactively to a comment he made about not wanting to sell land to the wrong parties. It was only after the fact that it came to me, he was saying something very revealing there.
Had I noticed his remark in real time, a proactive response could have been:
“Now mayor you have mentioned the importance of your town being very careful when it comes to re-purposing city owned land or even divesting itself of what might be a liability by selling certain assets to private concerns. Could you in the broad strokes discuss the kinds of pressure Yorkton is facing, be it circumstantial or perhaps pertaining to certain third parties, when it comes to reassessing land usage and ownership? What kinds of partnerships or collaborations do you think will best serve the people of Yorkton?”
That might have led to a more specific and interesting discussion. It is helpful to use common language (the buzzwords of Climate Action doctrines) such as partnering and collaboration; this is another form of empathy which helps establish rapport. But we can also re-purpose those terms––which many of us believe are obfuscations of a deeper agenda:
especially resilience and sustainability.
The City of Calgary itself, in pursuing the Journey to 2050, has partnered with the Alberta Council for Environmental Education. This special interest group is actually developing curriculum for the province’s public schools, K to 12. Their website is revealing:
Teaching about environmental sustainability has never been more important as we increasingly feel the effects of an unsustainable human footprint on the planet’s systems.
https://www.abcee.org/curriculum-support/
Critics of Agenda 21 believe that we are the carbon its drivers seek to reduce, hence the reasonable inference that Malthusian mentalities are implicit in their goals and eventual methodology for achieving so called sustainability.
And we can thank the AB Council for Environmental indoctrination for making it clear that it is not the carbon footprint but rather the “human footprint” itself which is unstainable.
What then is meant by achieving greater sustainability if the human footprint is not sustainable…
Concerns about affects on populations are shared by many of us who are resisting the arcs of Climate Action and the Sustainable Development Goals aimed at municipalities since the early 1990s. But speaking of journeys and pathways, sharing our deeper convictions and expecting a buy-in response from FCM delegates would require from them a very long walk indeed based on their current understanding of Journey 2050.
This could prove to be a bridge too far.
How then do we share our convictions regarding what is quite possibly a malicious agenda?
Close the immediate gaps by re-purposing the language of Climate Action.
Turn the conversation towards specific, identifiable infrastructure shortfalls which all Canadian municipalities face. For example, talk about sustainability in terms of paving roads better*; preserving clean water; and making waste management more efficient.
And there are other challenges outside of rhetoric and dialogue when it comes to the mission of reaching out to the delegates attending FCM events.
The uber-corporate nature of local governance is also manifest at the FCM conference. They partnered with the Telus Conference Centre, the security personnel of which kept the general public out of conference rooms and eventually from entering even the trade show space (the foyer outside the main conference room). We could, on this basis, dismiss the FCM Conference as just another corporate, closed door gathering of delegates––just another example of the private, secretive nature of Canadian government.
But the truth is, there remains plenty of opportunities to interact with delegates in the adjoining public spaces:
in the case of this conference, along the pedestrian mall of Stephen Avenue which is where most of my interviews took place.
RECOMENDATION
I would encourage KICLEI and its allies to maintain the attitude that these conferences are opportunities for establishing rapport with the elected local representatives of both urban and rural Canada.
And while my observations of delegates represents a small sample survey, it appears that the bigger the City, the more likely its representatives are to be aligned with Agenda 21 as pushed by Justin Trudeau. And to illustrate this credible principle, I would put the Reeve of Elie and the Mayor of Halifax on opposite ends of that implied continuum:
the Reeve is cynical of Climate Action goals which she herself calls “dreamy and fluffy”; the Mayor of Halifax (and certainly our Mayor of Calgary, Jyoti Gondek) appears to be fully aligned with Justin Trudeau’s densification schemes and alleged goal of “sustainability.”
This is a challenge we can overcome by being aware of certain pathways towards empathy:
however big the city, however invested in Climate Action the delegate appears to be, give him or her an opportunity to share a real concern about an identifiable problem their town or city faces.
Justin Trudeau lobbies delegates with money. We shall lobby them with reason, logic and empathy.
Hopeful this informal analysis, drawn from my observations and interviews with certain delegates, will prove helpful to those who are concerned about the Journey to 2050 and its policy arcs and who also believe in the potential of FCM conferences as a means of establishing rapport and dialogue with local governments; their authority is certainly significant––otherwise Justin Trudeau would not be trying to incentivize their alignment with the globalist agenda.
Shane Roberts
RCAF Air Navigator retired
Political Analyst
roberts_shane@hotmail.com
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Typical actions by Trudeau. And, yes, he lobbies with money, as do all the Agenda 2030 pushers. Some media and weak/ignorant politicians love these offers of grift.