Government Green Tech Grifting in Canada

America should pay attention in light of recent Electric Truck mandates from Biden.

There’s some symbolism here if you think for a minute.

A very interesting piece of news came to light in British Columbia this week, from a fellow trucker, entrepreneur, engineer, former guest of my podcast, and all around good guy, Chace Barber.

It appears that Chace and his hybrid diesel-electric heavy truck company, Edison Motors, have found themselves at the center of a major political scandal centered on a company who was offering to secure government clean tech development grants for Edison, amongst others.

This short eight minute video from Chace tells the whole story -

@_edison.motorsStatment to the corruption scanal #edisonmotors #bc #ev #electricsemi #bc #ndp #goverment #carbontax #truckers #politics

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At the beginning of the video, Chace references a media piece from a journalist in BC named Rob Shaw, who has been investigating dirty business on the part of an independent accounting firm called MNP, who have been accused of involvement in conflicts of interest while administering grants for a program called CleanBC Electric Advanced Research and Commercialization. MNP have been caught red-handed attempting to extract payola from Edison Motors.

The full story from Mr Shaw can be read here.

Some snippets -

B.C.’s three opposition parties united this week to demand the auditor general probe a so-called “kickback scheme” involving one of the companies responsible for administering millions of dollars of government grants to clean technology projects.

BC United, BC Green and BC Conservative MLAs voted for an independent probe of accounting firm MNP, which the government has hired to administer at least two grant programs, but which is also facing allegations it demanded so-called “success fees” of as high as 20 per cent of the grant amount to help firms win money.

“Requiring 20-per-cent success fees on grants, success fees to the company that's actually doing the adjudication, if true, is wrong on so many levels,” BC United MLA Todd Stone said in the legislature.

“That practice, if it is happening, needs to stop. The only way that British Columbians will know is if there is actually an audit and investigation into this, and that's the role of the auditor general.”

At least one company has gone public with its concerns, Merritt-based Edison Motors, a new startup that is building electric semi-trucks used for logging, and which sought provincial aid to expand its operations.

Of course, a representative from MNP, and another from the BC provincial government, denied any wrongdoing, and whaddya know, the provincial government voted against launching an investigation into the matter.

MNP denied any conflict in its role as both the administrator of some government grants, and as a private firm trying to sell its services to clients as an expert on B.C. government grant procurement.

“MNP is careful to ensure there is no conflict with this type of service and programs that we consult on or help administer,” partner Todd Nash said in a statement.

“After looking into this situation, we can state that no conflict occurred and no one from MNP offered to provide services that relate to any program that MNP administers.”

B.C.’s Ministry of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation said there were no technical violations by MNP, because the grant programs in which the company stipulated a 20-per-cent success fee—the BC Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy fund, the BC Manufacturing Jobs Fund and the Investments in Forestry Industry Fund, for example—are not technically administered by MNP.

Which party is running BC? The NDP, the same party whose federal cousins, under the ‘leadership’ of Jagmeet Singh, are in an arrangement with Justin Trudeau that NO ONE VOTED FOR, which sees the NDP blocking any attempt to remove Trudeau from office via Confidence Motion, for the many, many crimes and deprivations Herr Trudeau has committed against his own citizens.

Good friend and fellow political commentating Trucker, Trent Lalonde, writing this morning at legendary Canadian politics blog Small Dead Animals gives us a glimpse into the history of the NDP, all the way back to its founding in 1950s Saskatchewan, and shows us that corruption and graft are central pillars of their operating philosophy.

Morris Shumiatcher was a lawyer and former Attorney General under Tommy Douglas who would help people secure business development grants from the Saskatchewan government. The process worked that an existing business person would hire Shumiatcher and Shumiatcher would then put together a deal in which the applicant would sell shares in their business to Tommy Douglas and Clarence Fines, Fines being the Minister of Finance. Once the shares were purchased Shumiatcher would arrange for the business to receive a very generous grant from the Saskatchewan government for business development. Shortly after the grant was paid the business person would buy back the shares from Tommy Douglas and Clarence Fines at an enormous profit. This scheme was repeated numerous times. The similarity to the current allegations in BC are obvious.


Given that the NDP (and the Liberals) run on the same poisonous operating software as the Democrats in the US, Americans should be on the look out for this kind of graft, especially due to recent EV mandates introduced by the administration of Zombie President Joseph R Biden.

From the Grid Brief newsletter of Energy Analyst

Emmet Penney

of the Nuclear Barbarians substack and podcast -

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency released its final Greenhouse Gas Emissions Regulations for Heavy-Duty Vehicles-Phase 3 rule. Trucking groups have come out against this new regulation, citing its unviability.

The rule, meant to reduce pollution, will affect models produced between 2027 and 2032. Heavy-duty work vehicles—delivery, garbage, utility trucks, etc.—are the target and the new standards are up to 60% stricter than previous standards for model year 2032.

———

The coalition said that the electric vehicles the EPA is trying to incentivize “fail to meet the operational demands of many motor carrier applications, reduce the payload of trucks and thereby require more trucks to haul the same amount of freight, and lack sufficient charging and alternative fueling infrastructure to support adoption. In addition, battery electric motorcoaches have a reduced range and capacity compared to diesel buses.”

Emmet joined me last year to discuss the viability of Electric Trucks, and specifically the fact that there is no generating capacity available, nor grid infrastructure to deliver, the electricity required to fulfill even a a micro-percentage of the claims our electric utopian overlords are using to hoodwink policy makers.

You should listen to this episode, and then subscribe to Emmet’s Substack listed above, as well has his Grid Brief newsletter. It is fantastic and ‘information dense’ about the ‘energy sparse’ solutions being sold to us by governments and grifters the world over.

And it is the grifting we need to worry about.

Mandates like this, given that they are impossible to fill, usually come with all kinds of ‘incentives’ which are usually or exclusively taxpayer funded programs like what caught Edison Motors up in this CleanBC mess.

Now extrapolate the resources made possible for CleanBC, BC being a small population province of roughly 5.5 million people, to the United States, population north of 300 million, and having a Federal Government whose primary achievement of the last 20 years has been to increase its debt to over 34 trillion dollars by spending like generations of drunken sailors who haven’t even been born yet.

They're already doling it out all over the place so you can be rest assured that scams, payola, graft, grifting, and outright fraud are going to be guaranteed fixtures of this industry going forward.

For more critical insight into the realities of ‘clean vehicle’ technology, I suggest you follow not only Emmet, but energy analyst

Robert Bryce

, as well as the Energy Security and Freedom Substack, and another great follow over on Twitter is mining engineer John Lee Pettimore.

JLPs tweet thread on the resources required to make clean tech utopianism come true is one of the most informative entries to ever grace that website -

https://twitter.com/JohnLeePettim13/status/1614178348694904837


Getting back to Chace, it is no wonder that Edison Motors was having difficulty accessing clean tech programs. Number one, Chace is a free market kinda guy, and had already shown that he could build and prove his technology with ZERO government assistance. His applications for these grants would have been embarrassing to the rulers of BC, as the NDP are the kind of people who will not countenance anything ever happening outside of state control. As Chace was only seeking funds to expand his operation, rather than create it, they couldn’t have taken any credit for developing Edison Motors technologies.

Number two, Edison Motors platform is not 100% electric. His systems require a backup generator for when the electricity sent to the batteries from regenerative braking runs out. Although this system still produces impressive fuel savings, and when the backup generator is running, it runs at a consistent peak-torque RPM that produces far less emissions than an engine which often goes up and down in revs from gear shifting and moving through power bands, I believe this is not good enough for the utopians, who are more often than not quite happy to let perfect be the enemy of good enough, or that which actually works.

For more information on Chace and Edison Motors, please listen and read -

Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and encouraged - gordilocks@protonmail.com