Food & Energy

MPs Consider TMX Toll Hike

By Valerie / September 19, 2023 /

Trans Mountain Pipeline operators must consider increasing tolls to limit mounting taxpayer losses on the project, the Commons natural resources committee said yesterday. MPs in a report said a huge loss appeared unavoidable.

“The pipeline operator may be unable to charge high enough tolls to cover the costs of the Trans Mountain expansion,” said a committee report Federal Assistance To Canada’s Natural Resources Sectors. “The committee heard the pipeline’s toll structure was only designed to cover the expansion’s original cost estimate of $7.4 billion plus 20 to 25 percent of any additional capital cost increases.”

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Resisting Genetically Mutilated Food and the Eco-Modern Nightmare: Together, ‘Just You and Me’

By Iron Will / September 18, 2023 /

That old advertising brochure dating from around the early 1960s encapsulates the arrogance of billionaires and their companies that think they are the hand of God, that they are the truth and the science, and that we should all be in awe of the technology they produce.

Facilitated by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they uproot highly productive traditional agriculture, saying it is deficient. They poison the soil, the food, the waterways and people. But that’s not enough. They pirate, own and genetically engineer the seeds. The chemicals and engineering do not result in more or better food. Quite the opposite. Diets have become narrower, and the nutritional content of many food items has progressively diminished (see McCance and Widdowson’s the Mineral Depletion of Foods). Moreover, food secure regions have become food insecure.

But it goes beyond this. Consider the amount of killer-chemicals that the likes of Union Carbide’s promised techno-utopian consumer society (Union Carbide produced numerous other similar brochures to the one presented above, promoting the role of science and technology across all sectors) has gifted to humanity in everyday products from shampoos to toys, pans, packaging, sofas and tins.

It is notable that glyphosate, the world’s most used agricultural herbicide, began life as an industrial chelator of minerals in metal pipes to prevent blockages and deterioration. It now ensures mineral depletion/nutrient deficiencies in the human body. Glyphosate affects human soil – the gut microbiome – which directly feeds the major organs. Little wonder we witness a proliferation of illness and disease.

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Will you sign the petition? No Grocery Tax

By Iron Will / September 18, 2023 /

To Prime Minister Justin Trudeau:

Another tax won’t make groceries more affordable, it will make them more expensive.

Canadians cannot afford a grocery tax.

The government should cut taxes to make life more affordable, not impose a new grocery tax.

We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to immediately rescind his grocery tax threat.

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Broke Promise, Hikes EI Rates

By Valerie / September 18, 2023 /

abinet is hiking Employment Insurance premiums by $1.4 billion despite a promise by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland that rates would be “holding steady.” Freeland in her March 28 budget promised “more money in Canadians’ pockets after a hard day’s work.”

“We all know our most vulnerable friends and neighbours are still feeling the bite of higher prices,” Freeland said at the time. “What all Canadians want right now is for inflation to keep coming down,” she added.

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‘Stall Home Prices,’ MPs Told

By Valerie / September 18, 2023 /

Parliament must “require home prices to stall” since inflation mainly benefits longtime homeowners over 55, a CMHC-sponsored group wrote MPs. The Prime Minister last Wednesday said “house pricing cannot continue to go up” but stopped short of advocating price controls.

“We can no longer tolerate the gap between home prices and local earnings growing any larger,” a University of British Columbia group Generation Squeeze wrote in a submission to the Commons finance committee. “Federal housing policy must be recalibrated to advance the goal of ensuring home prices stall so that earnings can catch up.”

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Couple Lives 43 Years Off-Grid, Generating Their Own Energy, Food, and Retirement Fund

By Shawna / September 18, 2023 /

An electronics technician from a Philadelphia suburb, who never expected to swap his 9-to-5 for living off-grid in the wilderness, has spent 43 years homesteading in the United States and Canada with his wife.

Together, they’ve built three homes in remote locations and have generated enough energy, food, and money to see them through retirement. They’ve even penned books.

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Can Honey Fight Diabetes?

By Iron Will / September 15, 2023 /

Currently, most health organizations, including the World Health Organization and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, still classify honey as either free sugar or added sugar. Although honey contains a significant amount of sugar, it differs from regular sugar. Numerous studies and experts have indicated that honey may benefit metabolism, specifically by reducing blood sugar levels.
Types of Sugars Found in Honey
Honey is a delightful gift from nature. With variations based on the source plants and other factors, there are more than 300 types of honey worldwide.
In general, honey is made up of about 17 percent water, and 95 to 99 percent of the remaining dry matter is sugar. Among these sugars, the major components are fructose and glucose. On average, 100 grams of honey contains approximately 38.5 grams of fructose and 31 grams of glucose.
Notably, 14 percent of the sugars in honey are rare sugars, many of which are formed during the maturation process of honey. These rare sugars are uncommon in nature and are believed to have beneficial health effects.

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Dig It! #200: Dutch Farmers & Fisherman with Elze van Hamelen

By Iron Will / September 15, 2023 /

In this week’s podcast we have special guest Elze van Hamelen back to discuss the global war on our food supply and her latest report for Solari Report called “Dutch Farmers and Fishermen: The People Who Feed Us.”
Elze’s Report – Dutch Farmers and Fishermen: The People Who Feed Us

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Critics, Opposition React to Ottawa’s Threat of Additional Taxes on Big Grocers

By Iron Will / September 15, 2023 /

Critics and members of the opposition have expressed concern over the federal government’s talk of potentially imposing additional taxes on major grocers.

Critics and members of the opposition have expressed concern over the federal government’s talk of potentially imposing additional taxes on major grocers. They argue that this move could worsen the affordability crisis faced by Canadians who are already grappling with rising food prices.

At the conclusion of the Liberal party’s three-day national caucus retreat in London, Ontario, on Sept. 14, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that his government is exploring various tools, including potential tax measures, to compel major grocery retailers to stabilize food prices.

The same day, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) called on Mr. Trudeau to “rescind his grocery tax threat.”

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Protecting Alberta’s ‘Food Corridor’ a Good Reason to Pause Renewable Energy Developments, Says Local Group

By Iron Will / September 13, 2023 /

A major concentration of irrigation and food production in southern Alberta is one example of why the provincial government was wise to put a six-month pause on renewable energy projects, according to the director of a landowner advocacy group.

Called “Canada’s Premier Food Corridor” (CPFC), the stretch of land along Highway 3 in southern Alberta is home to some of the country’s biggest agri-food ventures, including a recently announced $600-million expansion to McCain Foods potato processing facility in Coaldale—the largest single expansion in company history.

The majority of Alberta’s irrigated farmland is also along the agri-food corridor, and there are plans to add over 200,000 more acres of irrigated land to the roughly 900,000 acres already in production, as well as long-term plans to twin Highway 3.

It all adds up to a lot of money. According to the CPFC, the corridor produces some $8 billion of gross domestic product annually, and people in the region hope that number will grow.

Daryl Bennett of Taber, Alberta, believes it’s a prime example of why the renewable energy project moratorium was a good idea.

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