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Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau unveiled his partys platform Wednesday, with more than $78 billion in new spending over the next five years largely focused on health care, child care, and economic recovery.

Of the new funding pledged, approximately $7.4 billion is planned over the next five years for climate initiatives ranging from electric vehicle infrastructure, to energy-efficient retrofits, to a just transition fund.

Then theres the less tangible. The platform is complete with promises to phase out fossil fuel subsidies; develop climate-friendly transportation, procurement, and adaptation strategies; and expand the office of the National Security and Intelligence Adviser into the world of climate change.

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This is the plan thats going to bring Canadians forward to end this pandemic, to invest in growth as we fight climate change and create jobs, and make sure were giving women the opportunity to get back into the workforce by ensuring $10-a-day child care right across the country, Trudeau told reporters.

University-Rosedale incumbent candidate Chrystia Freeland also spoke to the platform, calling it fiscally responsible and highlighting that its 10 or so major planks had been costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). She added that while some promises reach out to 2030 and beyond, it was a deliberate choice to cost the policies over five years because thats a government budgeting standard, and there are simply too many variables to confidently say what the countrys fiscal position would be after that.

Its an investment in the green transition, she said. The green transition is a reality in the global economy, and as Canadians, the only choice we have now is: Do we want to be ahead of the curve?

Do we want to build a green economy so we can continue to sell things to other people, or do we want to fall behind?

The platform says Liberals would collaborate with the United States and the European Union on implementing a border carbon adjustment essentially a carbon tariff in order to push emissions down in international trade. There is no solid commitment, but the platform says Liberals would consider border carbon adjustments on imports of steel, cement, aluminum, and other high emission industries.

One competitive advantage Canada has is that its power grids are already relatively clean. The Liberal platform says, if re-elected, it would introduce a clean electricity standard to have a 100 per cent carbon-free power grid by 2035. Moreover, the Liberals are promising to create a pan-Canadian grid council to promote better integration among regional grids. In other words, the council would aim to beef up transmission lines to move hydropower and renewables to regions still using coal, gas, or other fossil fuels to generate electricity.

Our electricity grid is already 83 per cent zero-emission, and what we can do with that is plug it into more things, said Clean Energy Canada executive director Merran Smith. That means connecting the power grid to our mines, battery manufacturing, (and) our auto sector so that we are using our clean electricity to produce low-carbon products for export.

We have a competitive advantage, but we need to build on it and Canada has lots of potential for solar, wind, and other renewable energies, she said.

International Institute for Sustainable Development policy adviser Vanessa Corkal called the platform a positive announcement with caveats.

It's not just about how much money we're spending on climate action, it's also how much money we're spending on things that are counter to climate action, she said.

The platform says a re-elected Liberal government would accelerate our G20 commitment to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies from 2025 to 2023, and develop a plan to phase out public financing of the fossil fuel sector, including from Crown corporations, consistent with our commitment to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Corkal called those promises a positive step forward but said actions speak louder than words.

The Liberals have been in power for six years and I would say their progress on fossil fuel subsidies has been quite slow When we did a comparison of all G20 countries, we found that Canada was actually the slowest of the OECD countries to be phasing out support for fossil fuels, she said.

Vancouver North incumbent candidate Jonathan Wilkinson told Canadas National Observer that Canada had committed to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies as part of its G20 commitment, referring to subsidies that incentivize further fossil fuel exploration.

The platform essentially accelerates the commitments so that we have said that we will be in a position to say that we've eliminated all of those by 2023.

Its not clear how exactly that will be achieved, says Corkal.

In their costing, they've only listed one measure that I can see, which is eliminating flow-through shares for the oil and gas sector, she said. The devil will be in the details.

Selling flow-through shares, like typical shares, is a way for a company to raise money. However, flow-through shares sell for more than typical shares because they offer tax advantages to investors, thereby making it easier for smaller companies to raise money.

If you're drilling a well looking for a resource, you'll either find something or you won't, and if you don't find something then essentially you've lost the value of that well, and so (government) allows for a 100 per cent writeoff of drilling wells for exploration, said Richard Masson, a former oilsands policy adviser to the Alberta government and an executive fellow at the University of Calgarys School of Public Policy.

Masson explained that policy has been in place for decades as a way to help usually Canadian-owned junior oil and gas companies. Essentially, if a company drills a $5-million well and comes up empty-handed, a lot of companies wouldnt have $5 million of taxable income to deduct against, he said.

Government allowed for those expenses to flow from the company through to the shareholders, and then the shareholders, which could be mutual funds, or executive management teams ... they can claim those flow-through expenses on their personal income taxes and reduce their tax burden, Masson explained.

Because that type of share is tax-attractive, that helps those small companies sell shares and raise money to drill wells.

Liberals say eliminating flow-through shares will generate $26 million in new revenue over the next five years. Specifically, Liberals expect $2 million in 2022/23 and $8 million in the years after.

With files from Natasha Bulowski

John Woodside / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada's National Observer

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What's in the Liberals' $78B platform? Plenty of green - National Observer

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Committing to turn your transportation system upside down without yet having tech to manage it economically almost certainly qualifies as a category of derangement

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We are now well past the mid-way point of 2021. (Dont say this column never delivers the facts!) Were having a federal election September 20. The results will probably be known by October 1 earlier if the number of mail-in ballots is less than predicted. Which means that even if the Liberals are returned to government, it will be 2022, and likely well into it, before any real policy gets done.

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I mention this because the Liberal platform says a re-elected Liberal government will require that by 2030 half of all passenger vehicles sold in Canada produce zero emissions, while all must be zero emission by 2035. That gives us eight years for the first target, 13 for the second.

Very helpfully for anyone interested in judging the scale of the challenge (i.e., not Liberal strategists), Statistics Canada produces data on new motor vehicle registrations by vehicle and fuel type, though only since 2017, when there were just over two million new registrations for the year. In 2018 and 2019 there were just under two million. Two million seems to be average.

Last year, which was decidedly not average, there were 1.546 million new registrations. The number for electric-battery vehicles, was 39,036, the most ever, up from 35,523 in 2019, 22,570 in 2018 and 9,079 in 2017. But that 39,036 was only 2.5 per cent of total new registrations. Or one in 40, which is some distance from one in two or, the Liberals 2035 target, one in one.

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According to StatsCan, electric-battery vehicles are the only kind that are truly zero emissions assuming the electricity charged into them is zero emissions, which in many instances it wont be. Hybrids would help the climate cause on cost and convenience terms that more Canadians would be willing to accept but of course many eco-types brook no compromise and fiercely oppose hybrids. The real zealots would outlaw personal vehicles of any kind.

The Liberals target refers to passenger vehicles, while the numbers Ive just given are for all motor vehicles. StatsCan says that last year 28,007 electric-battery passenger cars were registered out of a total of 498,031 such vehicles, which is 5.6 per cent, or one in 18. So thats a little better. But if you look at the average of new passenger-car registrations for 2017-19, its 568,000. To get electric-battery cars up to being half that, you need to increase their annual registrations to 284,000 that is, ten-fold. To get them to the full 568,000, you have to increase their yearly supply 20-fold.

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I do understand that the Americans took only eight years to get to the moon. Though we ourselves still havent been to the moon, our six-year all-out mobilization did help win the Second World War. I have no doubt that if we were in a mortal conflict with a virulent totalitarian regime and our military planners told us that, strange as it might seem, the only way we could possibly achieve victory was to carpet bomb them with functioning electric passenger vehicles, we could re-wire our economy for that task, as we did from 1939-45, and produce as many such projectiles as we needed. (Call it the Mississauga Project.)

But despite the more fevered analogies of environmentalists our current situation isnt at all like 1939-45. My guess is most Canadians are not willing to make the same sacrifices as our parents and grandparents did in defeating Hitler. Electric-battery vehicles do involve sacrifice. They dont have the range of gasoline-powered ones, they cost a lot more and they take longer to refuel, while their batteries are bulkier and heavier than a gas tank. All that may change as technology races ahead. But it hasnt changed yet. Committing to turn your transportation system upside down without yet having the technology to manage that trick economically almost certainly qualifies as a category of derangement.

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Given that many if not most of us will not feel a patriotic impulse to de-commission our gas- or diesel-fuelled vehicles, Canada post-2030 may come to resemble Havana post-1959, where, unable to buy replacements, drivers squeezed decade after decade out of their big-finned, mid-century American Buicks, Chevies and DeSotos. In Havana North well drive our 2020s guzzlers for as long as we can, hoarding spare parts as if they were truffles or gold nuggets unless, as they may, the comrades in Ottawa decide sometime in the 2030s to simply outlaw internal combustion and diesel engines.

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Whats also true is that the passenger vehicle stipulation in the Liberal proposal is a big enough loophole to drive a mini-van, crossover sport vehicle or a pick-up truck through. Theres a longstanding precedent for this kind of escape from regulation. When in the 1970s the U.S. introduced its corporate average fuel efficiency or CAFE standards, pickup trucks faced less stringent requirements than passenger cars. Its no accident that in the decades that followed, pickup trucks went from under 10 per cent of vehicle sales to over half.

In 2020, the number of newly registered vehicles that were not passenger cars was 1.225 million. If the Liberals win, expect that number to rise fast as 2030 approaches.

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William Watson: On the road to Havana The Liberals pig-headed net-zero carpolitik - Financial Post

On Wednesday, actor Naseeruddin Shah had released a video criticising Indian Muslims who seemed elated at the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Terming the celebration by Indian Muslims over the Talibans victory as dangerous, Shah stated that every Indian Muslim should ask himself whether he wants a reformed, modern Islam or the barbaric values of past centuries.

Shah even went on to say that his Islam is inspired by Mirza Ghalib, which is non-political and Hindustani Islam has always been different from the Islam that is practised elsewhere and prayed that the Indian version of Islam doesnt change so much that it is no longer recognisable

However, Shah, who is usually a favourite of Indian Islamists and so-called secular-liberals for his anti-Modi stand, suddenly was cancelled. Islamists of all hues and range started condemning Shahs condemnation, asking him not to preach what Islam should or should not be. Apparently, talking about reforms within the religion is not Islamist enough for Islamists. Here are some samples:

Rifat Jawaid of the pro-AAP blog Janta Ka Reporter even went a step ahead and declared Shah as not Muslim enough to speak about Islam, because he is not a practising Muslim and he has no knowledge about some topics.

Jawaid then went ahead and clarified what knowledge he was talking about. As per him, putting geographical tags on Islam is haram. Islam apparently knows no separate kingdoms or regions. Islam remains the same regardless of region. The Caliphate junkies of ISIS would be really proud of him.

The very idea of a Caliphate or global Islamic brotherhood is based upon the idea that Islam itself is the supreme identity and its adherents need not oblige to any other ethnic, regional or cultural identities. ISIS believes in it. The terrorism sponsors of Pakistan believe in it and every other radical who has blown himself up for the sake of Jannah or Ummah believes in it too. Jawaid just explained it in simpler terms.

Jawaid and Naqvi are just two examples from the so-called elite, there are dozens of others who are spewing venom on Naseeruddin Shah, declaring him unfit to issue advice and suggestions, even accusing him of trying to appease the Hindus. Just regular Ummah things on Indian social media.

Swara Bhaskar was cancelled recently too. She was cancelled because she was seen following the Hindu rituals of Grih Pravesh. For a section of secular-liberals, following the rituals of ones own religion, if that religion is Hinduism, is haram. On the contrary, Hindus who openly deride Hinduism, make Gaumutra jokes, eat beef and abuse Hindu Gods, are celebrated instantly.

Any Hindu who praises Islamic values and lifestyle is praised too. No matter how many high-fives Swara had given to Islamists and wokes, no matter how many Gaumutra jokes she had cracked, she was mercilessly cancelled the moment she was seen following Hindu rituals of Grih Pravesh, under the guidance a Hindu priest.

The comments got so heavy that the actress had to compensate her previous post with an explainer, that being Hindus does not necessarily mean being hateful, such is the power of narrative setting.

It is not just Swara and Naseeruddin. Not very long ago, Naseeruddin Shah was seen spewing venom against the government of India in anti-CAA protests, instigating Muslims against a law that had nothing to do with them and did not affect them in any way. He had been peddling the Dara Hua Musalman narrative for years now. And yet, the moment he speaks about reforms, and warns against barbarism spread in the name of Islam, he gets cancelled. It is a mandate, it is an omerta. You follow the strict directive, or you will be cancelled.

Indian, and for that matter even the global Left-liberal intelligentsia is a slave at the feet of Islamists. The very same feminists who cry hoarse over women rights in liberal democracies promptly affirm that Hijab is a choice, the same liberals who proclaim themselves as champions of diversity and inclusion, never dare to speak against homophobic laws in Muslim countries.

For Indian Islamists, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam was not Muslim enough. Sagarika Ghose had called him bomb daddy, scholars had written articles about how the former President and scientist was too-Hindu-friendly, Arfa Khanum Sherwani had asked why is he eulogised and so on.

The same Naseeruddin Shah was hailed and praised when he harped on how the Indian Muslim is the victim of injustice, hatred. He was celebrated when he asked anti-CAA protestors to agitate against the government. But the moment he talks about reforms, he gets promptly cancelled. Despite being a successful, celebrated actor, loved all over the country, Shah had peddled the fake I am afraid for my children narrative and was hailed for it by the same Islamists and liberals who today cancelled him for speaking about reforms.

Recently, IPS officer Najmul Hoda in an article in The Print, explained how the Indian Muslims and liberals are trapped in a toxic relationship. He discusses how the so-called liberals kept Muslims confined to a certain mindset of denial, whitewashing over historical instances and making them believe that they are perpetual victims, thus binding the entire population in a mental state where they actively denounce reforms.

The cancellation of Shah is just an example of the larger reality that is the ugly underbelly of the Global Left. It is my way or the highway. Liberalism in India is about perpetual victimhood peddling, whitewashing and smokescreens.

It was evident when the liberals, interestingly Swara included, were enthusiastically equating the Taliban with Indias democratically elected government. Imran Khan the terrorism sponsor becomes a star for them, Sharjeel Imam and his separatist buddies are painted as victims but just because he is Hindu, Yogi Adityanath is always a villain. In the case of Indian liberals, all their intellect, their thought process, and talks of progressive ideologies lie firmly at the feet of Islamist radicals.

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Liberals can live only as slaves of Islamists, or they will be cancelled: Naseeruddin Shah is an example - OpIndia

The possibility that Larry Elder may win Californias recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom is generating acute anxiety in the mainstream media and among the activist left. Elders foes are responding with their favored means of destruction: by playing the race card.

Never mind that the nationally syndicated talk show host is black. A series of opinion columns and editorials have accused him of being a white supremacist, or at the very least a shill for other white supremacists. Elect Elder and California will reinstate Jim Crow, state Sen. Sydney Kamlager, a Democrat from Los Angeles, has warned.

The media have focused particularly on Elders views about crime and policing. The self-described Sage from South-Central maintains that criminals, not the police, are the biggest threat in the black community. According to Elder, the false narrative about lethal police racism has only led to more black homicide deaths.

When you reduce the possibility of a bad guy getting caught, getting convicted and getting incarcerated, guess what? Crime goes up, he said recently at a campaign event in Orange County.

Elder also rejects the charge that white civilians are gunning down blacks, as LeBron James maintained in a tweet during the George Floyd riots: We are literally hunted everyday, every time we step outside the comfort of our homes. Elder has a different take. If a young black man is eight times more likely to be killed by another young black man than [by] a young white man, Elder told the Orange County Republicans, then systemic racism is not the problem.

Such statements are anathema to the establishment left, deeply invested as it is in the idea that blacks have little agency in the face of ubiquitous white racism. Few subjects are more taboo in elite discourse than the elevated rate of crime among blacks, as it suggests cultural pathologies that at the very least complicate the victim narrative. To the left, black crime is little more than a racist fiction.

Los Angeles Times columnist Jean Guerrero claims that the crime statistics Elder has cited over the decades to support his views and policy proposals are misleading, if not outright false, casting Black people as unusually crime-prone. Black people are not more inclined toward violent crimes, nor do blacks disproportionately victimize whites, Guerrero wrote, citing Columbia law professor Jeffrey Fagan and other criminal experts. (Fagan was the plaintiffs expert in a trilogy of lawsuits against the New York Police Department in the 2010s.) Fellow Times columnist Erika Smith sneered that Elder keeps trotting out statistics that purport to show that Black people are particularly prone to murdering one another.

Unfortunately for Elders critics, the statistics showing vastly disproportionate rates of black crime and victimization come from some of the lefts favorite sources. CDC data show that in 2015, for example, the homicide victimization rate for blacks age 10 to 34 (37.5 per 100,000) was 13 times the rate for whites (2.9 per 100,000). That disparity is undoubtedly much greater now, given the record-breaking increase in homicides since the George Floyd riots an increase disproportionately affecting blacks.

Those black victims of homicide are not being killed by cops or whites. They are being killed by other blacks. In Los Angeles, blacks this year have committed 46 percent of homicides whose offender is known, even though they are just 9 percent of the Los Angeles population. Whites make up 28 percent of the Los Angeles population but have committed 4 percent of homicides, mostly involving domestic violence.

These data, reported by the Los Angeles Times, mean that a black Angeleno is 35 times more likely to commit a homicide than a white Angeleno. Homicide data are the gold standard for crime statistics. Alas for Jeffrey Fagan and the Los Angeles Times other experts, the statistical conclusion that blacks are more inclined toward violent crimes is indisputable.

What about the claim that blacks dont disproportionately victimize whites? In 2019, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of criminal victimization, blacks committed 127,350 non-lethal violent crimes against whites, while whites committed 17,690 non-lethal violent crimes against blacks. In other words, blacks commit 88 percent of all interracial violence between blacks and whites.

Crime apologists argue that such disproportions are inevitable because there are so many whites in the US. But in cities where racial ratios are more commensurate, the amount of white-on-black violence remains negligible.

Occasionally videos and reports of interracial violence flash mobs, knockout games, and brutal beatings and robberies become public. If the races were reversed, there would be a national uproar lasting months; but such incidents get scant, if any, mainstream media coverage. They are the reason why the press has all but eliminated reporting on the race of crime suspects.

Such voluntary action is not enough to ensure public cluelessness about the reality of crime, however.

Gov. Newsom recently signed a law prohibiting Californias police departments from posting mugshots of arrested criminals if their latest crime was non-violent. The San Francisco Police Department has stopped posting mugshots of all criminals. Police Chief Bill Scott explained that doing so creates an illusory correlation for viewers that vastly overstates the propensity of Black and brown men to engage in criminal behavior.

Actually, mugshots document a real correlation. If the San Francisco Police Department could undercut that correlation by posting mugshots of white muggers, does anyone doubt that it would rush to do so?

Elders dismissal of Black Lives Matter claims about systemic police violence is also grounded in fact. Police officers are at greater risk of civilian violence than blacks are at risk of police violence. And a disproportionate source of that danger to cops comes from black criminals.

Fifty police officers have been murdered this year as of Aug. 25. In 2019, there were 697,195 sworn officers in the US. That employment count would be lower now, in light of the rush of officer retirements over the last year and a half and the inability of police departments to recruit replacements. Conservatively, using the 2019 number, however, those 50 officers represent a rate of approximately seven officers killed per 100,000 on the job.

Four unarmed blacks have been fatally shot by police officers so far in 2021, according to the Washington Post. (Unarmed does not mean compliant; the Posts category includes crime suspects who violently resist arrest, pummel officers after knocking them to the ground, and continue fighting after being tased.) Those four black victims represent .0000085 percent of the nearly 47 million self-identified blacks, or less than one one-hundredth of one person killed by the police per 100,000.

A police officer is 875 times as likely to be killed on the job as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police officer.

Historically, blacks have made up over 40 percent of cop-killers nationwide 43 percent between 2005 and 2013 though they are, at most, 13 percent of the nations population. In New York City, blacks were responsible for 74 percent of the murders of on-duty New York Police Department officers between 1986 and 2020. In 2019, blacks nationally were over 37 percent of all cop-killers whose race was known.

Conservatively estimating that 40 percent of the cop-killers this year have been black, 20 officers would have been killed by a black suspect in 2021, for a rate of nearly three cops per 100,000 officers killed by a black. A police officer is 375 times as likely to be killed by a black suspect as an unarmed black is to be killed by a police officer.

Elder is breaking the taboos about black crime in an effort to save black lives. Police activity must be understood in the context of crime, not simple population ratios, since policing today is data-driven. Cops go where people are most being victimized, and that is in black neighborhoods. The police cannot protect black victims without having a disparate impact on black criminals.

But the lies directed against cops from the highest reaches of government have led the police to back off. The Los Angeles Police Department experienced a 43 percent reduction in arrests in 2020 and a 27 percent reduction in street stops. This year, through Aug. 21, arrests are down another 28 percent, compared with the same period in 2019.

Crime responded predictably. Homicides in Los Angeles through Aug. 21 are up 44 percent compared with the pre-George Floyd year of 2019; shots fired are up over 48 percent, and shootings up 44 percent. In Los Angeles County, homicides were up 111 percent this year through late May. As the Los Angeles Times reported, Latino and black victims account for nearly all the recent surge in homicides in Los Angeles.

Assaults on officers also rose in 2020. Since the George Floyd riots, officers in California have been shot at, assaulted with lethal projectiles, firebombed, and run over. In September 2020, longtime felon Deonte Murray walked up to the parked squad car of two Los Angeles County sheriffs deputies and shot them both in the head as they sat inside. Bystanders cheered; anti-cop protesters continued the celebration later at the hospital, as the deputies struggled on life support.

Yet despite this open season on cops, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascn declared in December 2020 that officers authority may be resisted with impunity and will not be prosecuted a declaration that strikes at the heart of civilization itself, as Elder understands.

Trying to ensure that blacks get the policing they need in order to stay alive would not seem to be the gesture of a white supremacist, black or white.

If Elder were running as a Democrat, the press would be celebrating the possibility of Californias first black governor. Instead, we hear nothing about shattering glass ceilings or diversifying the ruling elite.

The New York Times ran an entire front-page article on Elders candidacy without once mentioning that he was black. (The article did claim in passing that Elder was an affirmative-action admit to Brown University, an unthinkable charge regarding a black liberal.) A column by Paul Krugman two days later was equally colorblind regarding the Elder candidacy.

Has the Times renounced identity politics? Only selectively. Adjacent to the Aug. 25 front-page article was a story on New Yorks new governor, headlined Hochul Breaks a Barrier and Pledges a New Era. The story opened with the observation that Kathleen C. Hochul became the first woman to ascend to New Yorks highest office on Tuesday.

Yet Hochuls entry into the governors mansion in Albany does not even signify anything about gubernatorial voting patterns; she was not elected but slotted in after Andrew Cuomos resignation.

Black governors have been much rarer than female ones. Elder would lead the nations largest state and be just the third black governor ever elected in the United States, following Douglas Wilder in Virginia and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts.

Elder is indifferent to the silence regarding the historic nature of his candidacy. But the medias effort to portray his run merely as a resurgence of alleged Trumpian racism depends on a shameful duplicity regarding crime and policing. As long as that duplicity remains in force, in the California governors office and elsewhere, the country will continue sliding toward anarchy.

Reprinted with permission from City Journal.

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Liberals play race card on black talk show host Larry Elder -- because he's speaking the truth - New York Post

It has since gained almost 18,000 followers on its Instagram page, more than 20,000 people have signed its petition calling for a plan for schools to urgently reopen a position that aligns with the state Liberal Party and it has featured in reports from the ABC, Channel Seven and the Herald Sun.

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Ms Blackwell said she was not motivated by politics and argued the group was valuable because kids dont have unions they have mums.

We arent anti-vaxxer, anti-lockdown or anti-government, she said. We supported the lockdowns last year, but we want a plan for schools to go back and experts to be consulted.

Kid are losing their spark. They have missed so much school; thats socialising, sport, education We dont have answers for them anymore when they ask what date theyre going back.

Influencers including Rozalia Russian, whose husband Nick Russian unsuccessfully ran on an unofficial Liberal party ticket for lord mayor last year, Nadia Bartel and Rebecca Judd have recently promoted Shadow Pandemic Victoria on their Instagram accounts. Judd landed in hot water last year after she referred to Premier Daniel Andrews as Dictator Dan on her Instagram account.

The group recently shared a tweet from Victorian Liberal MP and former opposition leader Matthew Guy, who said he was fed up with the government telling him that home-schooling was somehow good for kids and they should learn to enjoy it.

Multiple state Liberal and crossbench MPs have contacted Ms Blackwells group in the hopes of collaborating. The group has declined these approaches in order to avoid a perception that it is aligned to a party.

Data from Google Trend shows interest in the phrase shadow pandemic is isolated to Victoria and peaked on the weekend of August 24.

The group has rallied against the governments playground ban, which was the lockdown measure that arguably generated the most negative media attention. The Andrews government overturned the ban on Wednesday despite recording the highest number of daily cases in more than a year.

If you or anyone you know needs support call Kidshelpline 1800 55 1800 or Lifeline 131 114.

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McGorry withdraws from event run by shadow pandemic mums group with links to Liberals - The Age