You aren't immune to propaganda. Carney's claims justifying his pro-corporate agenda prove it.

You aren’t immune to propaganda. None of us are.

That reality is clearer than ever when you look at how Canadians are responding to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s fossil fuel agenda — and based on an analysis I’ve conducted on the news releases his office has released since Canada Day, fear and urgency seems to be the goal.

Carney’s propaganda efforts came to the front of my mind over the weekend when I read the Toronto Star’s Althia Raj’s new column about Carney’s Building Canada Act, which I also covered in a recent video. This is a terrifying new law that allows Carney’s government to run roughshod over the environment, Indigenous rights, and much more. It empowers a project deemed in the national interest to bulldoze past carefully crafted laws and regulations about how we build massive projects — including pipelines.

In the piece, Raj poignantly asks: “If the government can legally ignore laws it dislikes — laws that were properly studied and debated — what does it say about the value of democracy and the rule of law?”

I feel like a broken record when I speak about this issue. In fact, I’m sure many in my audience are tired of reading such a similar story again and again. But I push ahead on this topic because — despite extreme weather burning, flooding and uprooting our communities — so many Canadians seem to believe this erosion of accountability, of democracy, in the name of a pro-corporate, pro-fossil fuel agenda is somehow necessary.

It’s not. That’s where the propaganda comes in.

Carney’s office has put out 14 news releases since Canada Day. I’ve excluded three of them from my analysis: two that announce the names of new chief justice appointees, given they’re only two sentences long, and one that announces the upcoming August 31 by-elections, given that release is only one sentence long.

All the other releases contain full announcements, with several paragraphs detailing why Carney is taking whatever action he’s detailing in the release.

In every single one of the 11 news releases since Canada Day that I analyzed, Carney’s team paints a clear picture of what they want you to think Canada is up against: a divided, dangerous, uncertain and/or rapidly changing world.

Specifically, in seven out of those 11 news releases, Carney tells us the world is more “dangerous.” It’s hard to imagine why the country might be nervous about the state of the world in the face of a prime minister that tells us nearly twice per week that our world is getting more dangerous.

Carney also mentioned that the world is “rapidly changing” or “changing rapidly” in four of these releases, called the world “uncertain” or highlighted its “uncertainty” in four of them, and called the world more “divided” seven times. In proposing a new oil pipeline, he also used the term “energy crisis.”

While arguments can be made that the world is indeed changing (as it always does), particularly in the United States, that the far-right is gaining traction globally (raising the danger and division, to a degree), and that the nature of our relationship with the United States under Donald Trump makes things more uncertain, what’s less clear is whether these assertions justify the moves Carney is making.

A significant degree of what’s making our world more dangerous, for example, is the climate crisis — and Carney is consistently dismantling efforts to reduce that danger. He’s pushing for fossil fuels, even as that push divides communities and risks our environment. He’s backsliding on Senate reforms to re-introduce a risk of increased partisanship and patronage, and he’s giving the government massive new powers to skirt laws in the pursuit of a pro-corporate, pro-fossil fuel (and, in the case of the oil pipeline, economically dubious) agenda.

All of this, he tells us, is necessary in this “dangerous,” “divided,” “rapidly changing” and “uncertain” world.

But Carney hasn’t made a clear, evidenced case as to why the moves he’s making will truly help combat these fears. A new oil pipeline to the West Coast might not even have a market demanding its increased barrels in the next decade. Patronage and partisanship created rot in the Senate, which was the point of Trudeau-era reforms Carney has eroded. Rolling back climate action and green policies worsens the wildfires, extreme storms, flooding and more that are destroying — and in some cases, taking — the lives of Canadians.

In short, I don’t buy it.

However, this kind of language keeps Canadians in a state of shock and fear — creating the conditions for them to accept things they might otherwise oppose.

That is propaganda.

The propaganda also appears to be working.

Earlier in this piece, I raised Althia Raj’s new op-ed. That was mainly because of the replies she received to her post online. When I skimmed them, I saw several comments that made lament my ability to read.

One use wrote, “Occasionally, like now...speed to get things done is needed. Or do we cower while Trump threatens our way of life.”

Another said, in response to the reality that a proposed new oil pipeline and linked port expansion project will critically threaten the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale Population (which is exactly why Carney needs the power to ignore rules laid out under the Species At Risk Act), “Should 75 whales determine the economy of 44 million Canadians?”

The overarching message you hear from many defenders of Carney’s pro-fossil fuel agenda is the one the prime minister has repeatedly placed in front of them: the idea that this is an existential moment for Canada, and the big things Carney is doing are necessary to protect us in this moment.

That argument, coupled with relentlessly repeated claims of “pragmatism,” have functioned as a sort of carte blanche in the eyes of Carney’s defenders.

The polls suggest it’s effective. The Liberals are still sitting very high up in the polls while support for the Conservative Party has cratered — so much so that a few recent polls suggest the Liberals have a double-digit lead over Poilievre’s Conservatives. The NDP has had a small uptick, but still aren’t competitive with the main two parties, even as the Liberals and Conservatives look increasingly like the same party in different fonts.

Still, one constant source of frustration for me is the fact that so many people look at politics purely in the context of elections. Elections are hugely important, but there are years of political decisions — ones Canadians can have a say about — in between each election.

We shouldn’t fear criticizing Carney today simply because it could create conditions for an even worse party to win power years from now. We shouldn’t be afraid to question the propaganda he’s using to justify a worrying agenda today just because another party could have an even worse agenda come the next election cycle.

We deserve to have a responsive government that listens to our concerns.

That’s why we can (and should!) question policies now, demand changes to actions that threaten our ecosystems and our democracy now, and refuse to blindly accept decisions that hinge on us being afraid rather than informed.