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Premier Kenney is derisive and mocking in his response, including frequent suggestions that we have lost our moral compass and are imagining human rights concerns where there are none. He instead remembers fondly the Amnesty International from his high school days, which campaigned to free prisoners of conscience. (We still do – every single day. In fact many of today’s prisoners of conscience are jailed because of their defence of the environment and Indigenous rights.)

But here are three grim human rights realities that Premier Kenney fails to acknowledge in his attacks on Canadian civil society.

First, the backdrop to all of this is the rapidly mounting global climate crisis. Earlier this week, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet — who as a political prisoner during the Pinochet years in Chile knows human rights abuse only too well — put it starkly at the UN Human Rights Council. She noted that, “Climate change is a reality that now affects every region of the world. The human implications of currently projected levels of global heating are catastrophic. The world has never seen a threat to human rights of this scope.”

Never seen a human rights threat of this scope. That is why Amnesty International is speaking out. And why we all must do so, particularly our political leaders. Instead, Premier Kenney gives the climate crisis only passing reference as he talks of “several more decades of strong oil demand,” which the world is going to “get from somewhere”. Yet Canada has committed to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. These necessary reductions are simply not consistent with growing oil production for decades. That is why we need a robust public dialogue on these issues, rather than a “war room” attempting to single out and silence environmentalists and rights defenders who raise such critical concerns.