Emmanuelle Ducros 9:00 a.m., March 5, 2024

Every morning after the 8:30 a.m. news, Emmanuelle Ducros reveals to listeners her “Journey into absurdity”, from Monday to Thursday.

This Tuesday morning, a bill being examined in Canada, a project which aims to be a climate protection text but which opens up frightening prospects.

A project which initially aims to ban advertising by oil and gas companies It was tabled in early February in the Canadian parliament by a left-wing party, the NDP.

Text under review.

So far, nothing very extraordinary, France adopted a similar text in 2021, with the Climate and Resilience law.

Not enough to whip a cat?

Yes. Because the Canadian text goes much further.

It is not limited to banning advertising.

He wants to prohibit any citizen from promoting a fossil fuel or its production, on any media, including social networks, under penalty of a fine of up to Can$500,000.

For a member of an oil company, the sanction is increased to two years in prison and a million dollar fine.

It’s all in the term “promotion”.

This is where it gets worrying: the term promotion is understood in the broad sense of the term: “‍a representation likely to influence and shape attitudes, beliefs and behaviors.

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In theory, if the text is voted on, it will no longer be possible to say to Canada something as banal as: “the extraction and sale of oil contributes positively to the country's economy". Which is, however, an economic truth. It will no longer even be possible to say that we are happy to work on an extraction platform.

It could become very complicated to have conversations, or even a political debate on the topic of energy.

Yes, because an article in the bill penalizes claiming that a fossil fuel is “less harmful than another.”

We could no longer mention in the debate the fact that natural gas, for example, emits more pollutants when burned than coal.

However, it is a scientific fact, which justifies that Canada's federal taxes are lower on gas than they are on other fossil fuels. 

Does this text have a chance of coming into force?

No, fortunately the party pushing it is unlikely to muster a consensus.

But the simple fact that there were people to write it raises questions.

Their aim is not to fight against scientific disinformation around the climate, which exists and which is a scourge.

No: this text is terrifying, because it wants to reshape facts, history and science.

He states that by erasing reality, by criminalizing it, we erase its problems.

Worse: it's up to reality to adapt to the currently magical idea of ​​a world without fossils.

How we can hope to move forward with this is a mystery.

It's dizzying.

This rewriting of the energetic fact, unfortunately, does not come out of nowhere... It is the counterpart of that which takes place in Anglo-Saxon universities with culture, literature.