Monday, December 11, 2023
Saturday, December 9, 2023
Canadian Government and Media Colluded to ‘Instill Fear,’ Coerce Citizens Into Taking Vaccines: Report
The 5,000-page report detailed how the COVID-19 response by the government was vastly irresponsible, unscientific, and against basic human rights.
“Politicians encouraged people to blame the unvaccinated for the restrictive measures that stopped them from getting back to normal. Those who had taken the COVID-19 vaccines felt morally superior and validated in scorning those who didn’t ‘do the right thing.’ Public shaming became a societal norm.”
The Freedom Convoy demonstrators “peacefully protested” against mandates, according to the report.
Vaccine Mandates
The report points out that coercion was applied to “virtually every aspect of Canadians’ lives” during the pandemic. Workplace vaccination mandates forced even workers who never intended to get a COVID-19 vaccine to take the shot, as people were afraid to lose their jobs. The government also blocked employment insurance for people who lost jobs because they didn't get vaccinated.Vaccines 'Should be Stopped Immediately'
The NCI report is based on the testimony of more than 300 members of the public and expert witnesses.Please share this.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
"If I Were the Devil" A Warnig to America, Paul Harvey
In 1965, Paul Harvey broadcasted “If I Were the Devil.” It is really amazing to realize over 58 years ago how accurately he “prophesied” the future spiritual condition of the United States. Many of his statements were considered ridiculously outlandish at that time in history.… pic.twitter.com/I9FEJt92sv
— Sassafrass84 (@Sassafrass_84) December 2, 2023
Friday, December 1, 2023
If I was going to dismantle the United States here’s how I’d do it
1. Criticize belief in God, make it sound absurd and fanciful. Associate it with bigotry and ostracism.
2. Entice men with sexual immorality and alcoholism to numb them so they will abandon all self-control and virtue, making them unable and unwilling to resist tyranny.
3. Pit wives against their husbands to undermine the authoritative structure of the home, causing families to break down and wives to abandon their duties to their children and husband.
4. Teach children to disrespect their parents and elders so they will reject familial and cultural traditions.
5. Abduct schools to propagandize and corrupt the morals of the coming generation who will then be used to propel the cultural revolution.
6. Bribe and blackmail judges and politicians to usurp control of the legislative and judicial branches and begin to pass wicked laws to further accelerate moral degradation.
7. Utilize overtaxation and bad economic policy to deprive men of their wages and outsource local production and labor thereby obliterating the middle class.
8. Promote infanticide and promiscuity to eliminate the passing of traditional values through the household.
9. Shame promoters of patriotism and nationalism while endorsing multiculturalism and diversity. This will destroy any sense of unity amongst the people.
10. Open the country’s borders to flood it with uncivilized, military aged males who have no loyalty to the United States and will not obey its laws.
11. Divide the population along political, racial, and economic lines to provoke animosity and fuel civil war to justify use of totalitarian power.
12. Capture the news media to ensure total control of information and engage in daily psychological warfare against the people.
13. Rig or steal every federal and regional election to ensure that none of your power is lost and the people remain under constant subjugation.
Sounds familiar? It should. We’re living through it right now.
For the love of all that is Holy, give up the silly myth that it is possible to remain religiously neutral in the affairs of our country.
Every society is ruled by a god. It’s not a matter of if we’ll have a god, but which God we will have.
As for me, I reject these earthly gods and choose the one, true God—Jesus Christ. Submit yourself to His rule, because He is overthrowing every throne and authority that arrogantly exalts itself against Him.
And He cannot lose.
Please share this.
Thursday, September 14, 2023
The One Question to End Abortion—WHAT IS IT? | Full Movie
Please share this.
You were you from the moment of fertilization—a unique human being who will never be repeated in all of human history. Abortion is one of the most hotly debated and complex topics in the world. Hitting the streets with common-sense reasoning, Mark Spence, Ray Comfort, and Emeal (“E.Z.”) Zwayne use science, philosophy, and theology to change people’s minds on abortion. This complex issue can be decided by answering one simple question: “What is it?”
The team behind award-winning movies like “180,” “Evolution vs. God,” and “Audacity” is back at it, changing people’s minds on abortion and proclaiming the gospel. This riveting documentary will equip Christians, change minds, and (by the grace of God) be used to bring sinners to a saving faith.
Visit https://www.LivingWaters.com to view more free Christian videos, articles, and to get tracts and other resources by Ray Comfort and the Living Waters team.
Invite us to speak at your church or event by going here:
https://livingwaters.com/request/
FACEBOOK
Living Waters: https://www.facebook.com/lwwotm
Ray Comfort: https://www.facebook.com/official.Ray...
Emeal ("E.Z.") Zwayne: https://www.facebook.com/official.EZ....
Mark Spence: https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMark...
Wednesday, September 6, 2023
The Origin Of The ADL
Elon Versus The ADL
As Zero Hedge reported yesterday, Elon Musk has threatened to sue the ADL (The American Defamation League) for defamation:
The ADL describes its mission this way,
To stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all
But as Zero Hedge noted in yesterday's article, conservative Jews such as Chaya Raichik, who runs the popular Libs of TikTok X account, have found themselves in the ADL's sights as well.
The case that sparked the growth of the ADL is instructive here, particularly since the organization just brought it up, causing a minor controversy on Elon Musk's site.
Remembering Leo Frank
Leo Frank, who was Jewish, was the manager of a pencil factory in Georgia where a 13 year old employee (labor laws were different then) named Mary Phagan was found strangled to death. Frank was tried and found guilty of the murder, and sentenced to death. After numerous appeals, the governor of Georgia commuted Frank's sentence from death to life imprisonment. Following that, a group of outraged Georgians broke Frank out of prison and lynched him.
Last month, the ADL commemorated the anniversary of Frank's death with post quoted below (z"l is an abbreviation of a Hebrew phrase meaning "of blessed memory").
One of Elon Musk's innovations was adding "Community Notes" to posts on X, where designated users can offer factual corrections to tweets. A community note questioned the ADL's use of "unjustly convicted", noting there was copious evidence at the time of Frank's guilt. Clicking on their post now, it appears the ADL successfully made that note disappear.
Was Frank Guilty?
The software entrepreneur, researcher, and editor Ron Unz (himself Jewish), addressed that question in a very long post on his site earlier this year ("American Pravda: The Leo Frank Case and the Origins of the ADL"). His short answer was "yes", but below is a brief excerpt elaborating on that answer. Following that, we'll close with a new update on that biotech trade we discussed here recently.
After mentioning a commemoration of the centennial of the ADL's founding, Unz writes [emphasis mine],
In the past, Frank’s name and story would have been equally vague in my mind, only half-remembered from my introductory history textbooks as one of the most notable early KKK victims in the fiercely anti-Semitic Deep South of the early twentieth century. However, not long before seeing that piece on the ADL I’d read Albert Lindemann’s highly-regarded study The Jew Accused, and his short chapter on the notorious Frank case had completely exploded all my preconceptions.
First, Lindemann demonstrated that there was no evidence of any anti-Semitism behind Frank’s arrest and conviction, with Jews constituting a highly-valued element of the affluent Atlanta society of the day, and no references to Frank’s Jewish background, negative or otherwise, appearing in the media prior to the trial. Indeed, five of the Grand Jurors who voted to indict Frank for murder were themselves Jewish, and none of them ever voiced regret over their decision. In general, support for Frank seems to have been strongest among Jews from New York and other distant parts of the country and weakest among the Atlanta Jews with best knowledge of the local situation.
Furthermore, although Lindemann followed the secondary sources he relied upon in declaring that Frank was clearly innocent of the charges of rape and murder, the facts he recounted led me to the opposite conclusion, seeming to suggest strong evidence of Frank’s guilt. When I much more recently read Lindemann’s longer and more comprehensive historical study of anti-Semitism, Esau’s Tears, I noticed that his abbreviated treatment of the Frank case no longer made any such claim of innocence, perhaps indicating that the author himself might have also had second thoughts about the weight of the evidence.
Unz goes on to discuss the details of the case, but basically, the other main suspect was a black janitor at the factory, and for white Southerners 110 years ago to convict Frank instead of a black man suggests they weren't motivated by bias, as Lindemann demonstrated above. If the American South had been a hotbed of antisemitism, the Confederacy wouldn't have had a Jewish man, Judah P. Benjamin, as its Secretary of War.
Why Does The ADL Keep Bringing Up Leo Frank?
Every time the ADL mentions the Frank case, particularly when they say he was unjustly convicted, without offering evidence in support of that claim, it generates a lot of hostile commentary, some of which could be construed as antisemitic. So why does the ADL do it?
Here's a theory: they do it precisely to generate hostile commentary, which they can then use to argue for more censorship.
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Sunday, August 6, 2023
Hiroshima, Nagasaki Bombings Were Needless, Said World War II's Top US Military Leaders
The anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki present an opportunity to demolish a cornerstone myth of American history — that those twin acts of mass civilian slaughter were necessary to bring about Japan’s surrender, and spare a half-million US soldiers who’d have otherwise died in a military conquest of the empire’s home islands.
Those who attack this mythology are often reflexively dismissed as unpatriotic, ill-informed or both. However, the most compelling witnesses against the conventional wisdom were patriots with a unique grasp on the state of affairs in August 1945 — America’s senior military leaders of World War II.
Let’s first hear what they had to say, and then examine key facts that led them to their little-publicized convictions:
General Dwight Eisenhower on learning of the planned bombings: “I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and voiced to [Secretary of War Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.”
Admiral William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff: “The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
Major General Curtis LeMay, 21st Bomber Command: “The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb…The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
General Hap Arnold, US Army Air Forces: “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy: “The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss…In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.”
Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer who prepared summaries of intercepted cables for Truman: “When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it…we used [Hiroshima and Nagasaki] as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.”
Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Pacific Fleet commander: “The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
Putting out feelers through third-party diplomatic channels, the Japanese were seeking to end the war weeks before the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945. Japan’s navy and air forces were decimated, and its homeland subjected to a sea blockade and allied bombing carried out against little resistance.
The Americans knew of Japan’s intent to surrender, having intercepted a July 12 cable from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, informing Japanese ambassador to Russia Naotake Sato that “we are now secretly giving consideration to the termination of the war because of the pressing situation which confronts Japan both at home and abroad.”
Togo told Sato to “sound [Russian diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov] out on the extent to which it is possible to make use of Russia in ending the war.” Togo initially told Sato to obscure Japan’s interest in using Russia to end the war, but just hours later, he withdrew that instruction, saying it would be “suitable to make clear to the Russians our general attitude on ending the war”— to include Japan’s having “absolutely no idea of annexing or holding the territories which she occupied during the war.”
Japan’s central concern was the retention of its emperor, Hirohito, who was considered a demigod. Even knowing this — and with many US officials feeling the retention of the emperor could help Japanese society through its postwar transition —the Truman administration continued issuing demands for unconditional surrender, offering no assurance that the emperor would be spared humiliation or worse.
In a July 2 memorandum, Secretary of War Henry Stimson drafted a terms-of-surrender proclamation to be issued at the conclusion of that month’s Potsdam Conference. He advised Truman that, “if…we should add that we do not exclude a constitutional monarchy under her present dynasty, it would substantially add to the chances of acceptance.”
Truman and Secretary of State James Byrnes, however, continued rejecting recommendations to give assurances about the emperor. The final Potsdam Declaration, issued July 26, omitted Stimson’s recommended language, sternly declaring, “Following are our terms. We will not deviate from them.”
One of those terms could reasonably be interpreted as jeopardizing the emperor: “There must be eliminated for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest.”
At the same time the United States was preparing to deploy its formidable new weapons, the Soviet Union was moving armies from the European front to northeast Asia.
In May, Stalin told the US ambassador that Soviet forces should be positioned to attack the Japanese in Manchuria by August 8. In July, Truman predicted the impact of the Soviets opening a new front. In a diary entry made during the Potsdam Conference, he wrote that Stalin assured him “he’ll be in the Jap War on August 15th. Fini Japs when that comes about.”
Right on Stalin’s original schedule, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan two days after the August 6 bombing of Hiroshima. That same day — August 8 — Emperor Hirohito told the country’s civilian leaders that he still wanted to pursue a negotiated surrender that would preserve his reign.
On August 9, Soviet attacks commenced on three fronts. News of Stalin’s invasion of Manchuria prompted Hirohito to call a new meeting to discuss surrender — at 10 am, one hour before the strike on Nagasaki. The final surrender decision came on August 10.
The Soviet timeline makes the atomic bombings all the more troubling: One would think a US government that’s appropriately hesitant to incinerate and irradiate hundreds of thousands of civilians would want to first see how a Soviet declaration of war affected Japan’s calculus.
As it turns out, the Japanese surrender indeed appears to have been prompted by the Soviet entry into the war on Japan — not by the atomic bombs. “The Japanese leadership never had photo or video evidence of the atomic blast and considered the destruction of Hiroshima to be similar to the dozens of conventional strikes Japan had already suffered,” wrote Josiah Lippincott at The American Conservative.
Sadly, the evidence points to a US government determined to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities as an end in itself, to such an extent that it not only ignored Japan’s interest in surrender, but worked to ensure that surrender was delayed until after upwards of 210,000 people — disproportionately women, children and elderly — were killed in the two cities.
Make no mistake: This was a deliberate targeting of civilian populations. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because they were pristine, and could thus fully showcase the bombs’ power. Hiroshima was home to a small military headquarters, but the fact that both cities had gone untouched by a strategic bombing campaign that began 14 months earlier certifies their military and industrial insignificance.
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing,” Eisenhower would later say. “I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
According to his pilot, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US Army Forces Pacific, was “appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster.”
“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb,” wrote journalist Norman Cousins, “I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted…He saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
What then, was the purpose of devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs?
A key insight comes from Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard. In 1945, Szilard organized a petition, signed by 70 Manhattan Project scientists, urging Truman not to use atomic bombs against Japan without first giving the country a chance to surrender, on terms that were made public.
In May 1945, Szilard met with Secretary of State Byrnes to urge atomic restraint. Byrnes wasn’t receptive to the plea. Szilard — the scientist who’d drafted the pivotal 1939 letter from Albert Einstein urging FDR to develop an atomic bomb — recounted:
"[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Romania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia."
Whether the atomic bomb’s audience was in Tokyo or Moscow, some in the military establishment championed alternative ways to demonstrate its power.
Lewis Strauss, Special Assistant to the Navy Secretary, said he proposed “that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood… [It] would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will.”
Strauss said Navy Secretary Forrestal “agreed wholeheartedly,” but Truman ultimately decided an optimal demonstration required burning hundreds of thousands of noncombatants and laying waste to their cities. The buck stops there.
The particular means of inflicting these mass murders — a solitary object dropped from a plane at 31,000 feet — helps warp Americans’ evaluation of its morality. Using an analogy, historian Robert Raico cultivates ethical clarity:
“Suppose that, when we invaded Germany in early 1945, our leaders had believed that executing all the inhabitants of Aachen, or Trier, or some other Rhineland city would finally break the will of the Germans and lead them to surrender. In this way, the war might have ended quickly, saving the lives of many Allied soldiers. Would that then have justified shooting tens of thousands of German civilians, including women and children?”
The claim that dropping the atomic bombs saved a half-million American lives is more than just empty: Truman’s stubborn refusal to provide advance assurances about the retention of Japan’s emperor arguably cost American lives.
That’s true not only of a war against Japan that lasted longer than it needed to, but also of a Korean War precipitated by the US-invited Soviet invasion of Japanese-held territory in northeast Asia. More than 36,000 US service members died in the Korean War — among a staggering 2.5 million total military and civilian dead on both sides of the 38th Parallel.
We like to think of our system as one in which the supremacy of civilian leaders acts as a rational, moderating force on military decisions. The needless atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — against the wishes of World War II’s most revered military leaders — tells us otherwise.
Sadly, the destructive effects of the Hiroshima myth aren’t confined to Americans’ understanding of events in August 1945. “There are hints and notes of the Hiroshima myth that persist all through modern times,” State Department whistleblower and author Peter Van Buren said on The Scott Horton Show.
The Hiroshima myth fosters a depraved indifference to civilian casualties associated with US actions abroad, whether it’s women and children slaughtered in a drone strike in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands dead in an unwarranted invasion of Iraq, or a baby who dies for lack of imported medicine in US-sanctioned Iran.
Ultimately, to embrace the Hiroshima myth is to embrace a truly sinister principle: That, in the correct circumstances, it’s right for governments to intentionally harm innocent civilians. Whether the harm is inflicted by bombs or sanctions, it’s a philosophy that mirrors the morality of al Qaeda.
That’s not the only thread connecting 1945 to 2023, as Truman’s insistence on unconditional surrender is echoed by the Biden administration’s utter disinterest in pursuing a negotiated peace in Ukraine.
Today, confronting an adversary with 6,000 nuclear warheads — each a thousand times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Japan — Biden’s own stubborn perpetuation of war puts us all at risk of sharing the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s innocents.
Let’s eradicate the Hiroshima myth: Please share this article
https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/hiroshima-nagasaki-bombings-were
Please share this.
Saturday, July 22, 2023
How to Recognize Propaganda | Cold War Era Educational Film | ca. 1957
This Cold War era film – originally titled as "Defense Against Enemy Propaganda" – is an episode of the U.S. Army's "The Big Picture" television series. It was released in circa 1957.
This film examines enemy propaganda and its danger to American way of life. It is an absorbing film presentation set in an exhibit room containing examples of media such as pamphlets, posters, broadcasts, and photographs, which were used by the enemy (primarily by the Soviet Union) to disseminate propaganda. A member of the Office of Special Warfare, whose job it is to recognize propaganda, describe its purpose, and discuss the methods of dissemination that may be utilized, narrates this film as stock footage and original shots of enemy propaganda are shown. The film concludes with the lesson that the best defense against enemy propaganda is the ability to recognize it for what it really is – lies and distortion with little or no basis in fact.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND / CONTEXT
Propaganda is information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies and the media can also produce propaganda.
In the twentieth century, the term propaganda has been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda historically was a neutral descriptive term. A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, cartoons, posters, pamphlets, films, radio shows, TV shows, and websites.
The West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, television, and radio programming to influence their own citizens, each other, and Third World nations. The United States Information Agency operated the Voice of America as an official government station. Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, which were, in part, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, provided grey propaganda in news and entertainment programs to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union respectively. The Soviet Union's official government station, Radio Moscow, broadcast white propaganda, while Radio Peace and Freedom broadcast grey propaganda. Both sides also broadcast black propaganda programs in periods of special crises.
(Black propaganda is false information and material that purports to be from a source on one side of a conflict, but is actually from the opposing side. It is typically used to vilify, embarrass, or misrepresent the enemy. Black propaganda contrasts with grey propaganda, the source of which is not identified, and white propaganda, in which the real source is declared and usually more accurate information is given, albeit slanted, distorted and omissive. Black propaganda is covert in nature in that its aims, identity, significance, and sources are hidden.)
When describing life in capitalist countries, in the US in particular, propaganda focused on social issues such as poverty and anti-union action by the government. Workers in capitalist countries were portrayed as "ideologically close". Propaganda claimed rich people from the US derived their income from weapons manufacturing, and claimed that there was substantial racism or neo-fascism in the US.
When describing life in Communist countries, western propaganda sought to depict an image of a citizenry held captive by governments that brainwash them. The West also created a fear of the East, by depicting an aggressive Soviet Union.
George Orwell's novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four are virtual textbooks on the use of propaganda. Though not set in the Soviet Union, these books are about totalitarian regimes that constantly corrupt language for political purposes. These novels were, ironically, used for explicit propaganda. The CIA, for example, secretly commissioned an animated film adaptation of Animal Farm in the 1950s with small changes to the original story to suit its own needs.
How to Recognize Propaganda | Cold War Era Educational Film | ca. 1957
TBFA_0151
NOTE: THE VIDEO REPRESENTS HISTORY. SINCE IT WAS PRODUCED DECADES AGO, IT HAS HISTORICAL VALUES AND CAN BE CONSIDERED AS A VALUABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT. THE VIDEO HAS BEEN UPLOADED WITH EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES. ITS TOPIC IS REPRESENTED WITHIN HISTORICAL CONTEXT. THE VIDEO DOES NOT CONTAIN SENSITIVE SCENES AT ALL!
Please share this.
Thursday, July 13, 2023
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Friday, June 9, 2023
Monday, May 22, 2023
Canada's got a drinking problem — and one senator says Ottawa needs to step up
The federal government pitched a sizeable increase to the alcohol excise tax earlier this year — only to walk back that commitment in response to backlash from some MPs, lobby groups and cost-conscious Canadian drinkers.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland's budget kept the annual tax increase much lower than inflation — it'll grow by just 2 per cent this year — after a well-organized letter-writing campaign convinced the government that the political repercussions of such a hike weren't worth the relatively modest revenue bump.
There was similar blowback when the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) recently issued new drinking guidelines that claimed no amount of alcohol is safe.
The recommendation prompted derision from some who said the health professionals behind the research are fun-averse teetotalers bent on needlessly worrying people about the risks of wine, beer and spirits. The government-funded data still hasn't been posted publicly by Health Canada.
These incidents reveal just how deeply entrenched alcohol is in Canadian life — and how reluctant the government is to crack down on drinking.
"You know, alcohol is the favourite substance of many policymakers and indeed for a lot of us. It has sort of an iconic cultural status. Politicians — they don't want to do much about it," said Dr. Tim Naimi, the director of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria.
"It's the leading cause of preventable death in Canada. It's the government's job to protect Canadians from the tremendous harms caused by alcohol. For some reason, they feel threatened by the facts."
At least one politician wants to do something to curb consumption.
Quebec Sen. Patrick Brazeau is a recovering alcoholic. His struggles with addiction have been well-documented.
Sober for three years, Brazeau now wants other Canadians to avoid the potentially life-altering effects of alcohol abuse.
"If you had told me 10 years ago I'd be sober and introducing a bill to label alcohol products, I would've told you you're crazy," Brazeau told CBC News. "I was drinking way too much because I was hurting inside. I was trying to kill the pain."
Brazeau said alcohol is the only known carcinogen that comes without warning labels.
He's introduced Bill S-254, which would mandate health labels on all alcohol bottles alerting consumers to the possibility of cancer.
Tobacco, vape and cannabis packages are already plastered with dire warnings, he said, and alcohol shouldn't get a pass.
"There's still a lot of taboo around alcohol — it's so widely accepted in our society," he said.
"But alcohol is not good for us and we have to stop pretending that it is. [It] doesn't seem there are too many people on Parliament Hill, elected officials, who are willing to take the bull by the horns and do something."
According to data collected by Naimi's institute, about 25 per cent of Canadian drinkers have no idea that alcohol can cause seven fatal cancers.
Other jurisdictions have tried to publicize these risks.
Dozens of countries around the world, including the U.S., already require health labels.
Researchers in Yukon placed warnings on liquor bottles in 2017.
The results were immediate — sales dropped by 6.6 per cent at a Whitehorse store as more consumers saw the prominently placed red labels. The project was scrapped amid pressure from some industry groups.
A spokesperson for Spirits Canada, a lobby group that represents the distilled spirits industry, did not respond to a request for comment on Brazeau's bill. Beer Canada has said the industry can regulate itself.
A cash cow for governments
Governments depend on liquor sales to generate billions of dollars in revenue to fund public programs.
The federal and provincial governments earned an eye-popping $13.6 billion from alcohol sales in 2021-22, according to Statistics Canada.
Drinkers — about 76 per cent of all Canadians consume alcohol in a given year — are understandably reluctant to pay more for a product that, statistics show, many regularly enjoy.
Some drinkers also bristle at the suggestion that moderate consumption is a problem, and defend alcohol as one of life's little pleasures.
While much attention has been paid to the ongoing opioid epidemic — a tragic health event that has claimed the lives of thousands of Canadian drug users — publicly available data reveals there's a parallel crisis underway.
"The opioid epidemic is a massive public health problem, but we have a very serious problem with alcohol, too," said Naimi.
"It's just that alcohol has been with us for a long time. We've essentially learned to live with a high rate of problems from many, many years."
Canada recorded 3,875 alcohol-induced deaths in 2021, according to the latest data from Statistics Canada — a 21 per cent increase over 2019 that likely was driven by a pandemic-related spike in consumption.
Other Canadian research suggests alcohol is even more deadly than those numbers suggest.
A peer-reviewed study published by the Public Health Agency of Canada suggests alcohol consumption in Canada is associated with approximately 15,000 preventable deaths (including 7,000 cancer deaths) and 90,000 preventable hospital admissions every year.
(Preventable deaths from alcohol are defined as alcohol-related cancers, cardiovascular disease, liver disease, unintentional injuries and violence.)
Those numbers closely track what's been reported in the U.S., a country with a population almost ten times that of Canada. The United States reports about 140,000 alcohol-related deaths each year.
While the government has rolled out a suite of policy measures to curb opioid-related deaths — there are more safe-consumption sites now and naloxone kits are ubiquitous — it's said comparatively little about what can be done to reduce alcohol-related death and disease.
Data shows that about 20 per cent of Canadians reported alcohol consumption that classified them as "heavy drinkers," according to Statistics Canada.
The numbers are higher in Newfoundland and Labrador (27.7 per cent) and Quebec (21.2 per cent) and lower in Manitoba (16 per cent) and Ontario (17.3 per cent).
Over the past decade, about 600,000 Canadians have become physically dependent on alcohol — a condition that can lead to injuries, violence, alcohol poisoning, risky sexual behaviour, heart disease, stroke, liver disease, cancer and mental health problems.
While alcohol is a cash cow for all levels of government, researchers say that profit is dwarfed by other costs.
The provincially owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), the world's largest alcohol importer, generated an annual dividend of roughly $2.4 billion in 2020-21.
I have 26 years left in the Senate so I'm in it for the long haul.
- Sen. Patrick Brazeau
By comparison, the collective impact of alcohol use on health care, crime and lost productivity has been pegged at an estimated $22.4 billion a year — a figure higher than the costs of tobacco use and the costs of all other psychoactive substances combined, including opioids and cannabis — according to research by Naimi's institute in Victoria.
"This is a big ticket item. Taxpayers are footing the bill for what amounts to ... a subsidy on alcohol and heavy drinking in particular," Naimi said.
A spokesperson for federal Mental Health and Addictions Minister Carolyn Bennett said the government will "continue to monitor" Brazeau's bill as it makes its way through Parliament.
As for the charge that it hasn't done enough to curb problem drinking, the spokesperson said "alcohol use is a serious and complex public health and safety issue."
Government won't support bill, Brazeau says
The government is investing in programs to prevent alcohol use during pregnancy, funding substance use and addiction support programs, restricting alcohol content in some beverages and financing research, the spokesperson said.
Brazeau knows he's facing an uphill battle.
In a meeting with Bennett, the minister told Brazeau the government likely won't support his bill, he said.
He's also routinely approached by lobbyists who are intent on killing the legislation, he added.
Brazeau said he's getting some support from other senators to push the legislation to committee — but he's not naive about the challenges that lie ahead in taking on such a popular vice.
"I have 26 years left in the Senate so I'm in it for the long haul," he said.
Referring back to his now infamous boxing match with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Brazeau said, "I'm not afraid of getting in a fight or getting knocked around."
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tasker-canada-alcohol-problem-health-warning-labels-1.6850180