Climate change mitigation is anti-Alberta, “cultural Marxism” is on the rise, and “extreme” LGBT activists are taking over schools, according to speakers at the recent Canada Strong and Free Network conference, attended by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and American culture war provocateur Christopher Rufo.

The Canada Strong and Free Conference, formerly known as the Manning Networking Conference, has long served as a nexus for conservative thinkers and leaders in Canada. This year’s event, with its embrace of more confrontational American-style messaging, may signal a shift in strategy as conservatives position themselves for future electoral battles.

“Facts don’t care about your feelings, you’ve heard this, okay. No, it’s completely backward. I think it’s completely wrong. It is the inverse, your feelings actually don’t care about facts,” said keynote speaker Rufo in his opening remarks. 

Rufo spoke about his appearance on Fox News and other activism as being the key reason former President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning racial sensitivity training at federal institutions. 

“When we launched this campaign it was dismissed as a fringe right-wing plot. By the spring we had abolished it (diversity, equity and inclusion training) in Florida,” he said.

Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, became prominent in the United States as a leading voice against what he terms “critical race theory” in schools and “gender ideology.” 

Rufo’s speech focused on using emotion, including rage, to move people to take action. 

“You have to talk to people in a way about issues that matter to them, in a way that persuades them so that they’re going to skip cooking dinner for their family to go do something for two hours that is actually high risk for them,” he said. 

Rufo’s influence has been felt in the wave of book bans and curriculum challenges sweeping across numerous U.S. states. He has argued that “transgenderism” is “threatening to families and kids all over the United States.” 

The event, held in Red Deer, Alberta, brought together influential figures from Canada’s conservative movement who spoke on transgender health policy, resource extraction, and healthcare. 

Climate and Culture War

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith spoke to a crowd of attendees in the afternoon, kicking off the discussion with a jab at the federal Liberal government for the appointment of Dr. Kristopher Wells to the Canadian Senate. 

She called Wells a “radical, extreme LGBT activist”* for the Liberal government. 

Wells was a professor at MacEwan University and faculty director of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies. He was a Canada Research Chair for the understanding of sexual and gender minority youth. 

The event also featured Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary political scientist with a long history of undermining climate action. 

In 2008, the Globe and Mail reported that a university audit had revealed Cooper was in charge of two research accounts that were used to funnel money to the Friends of Science, a non-profit that had ties to the federal Conservative party and calls human-caused climate change a “myth.” A DeSmog profile shows that they are largely funded by the oil industry. 

Cooper wrote in his paper for the Alberta inquiry into foreign funding in environmentalism that there was “growing scientific skepticism regarding the so-called consensus view regarding anthropogenic (man-made) climate change.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that “human influence on the climate system is clear, evident from increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiance forcing, observed warming, and physical understanding of the climate system.” 

The largest cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. 

These days, Cooper said he is focused on Alberta politics, not the rest of Canada.

“Laurentian Canada seems more interested in being weak and dependant to a cabal of Ottawa bureaucrats,” he said in a panel on Canadian federalism. 

Alberta, said Cooper, is being punished for a country-wide “anti-Alberta reality” that “existed for decades prior to the discovery or invention of environmental issues,” he said. 

“We have been told ad nauseam that we are in a global climate crisis and the end of internal combustion engines and hydrocarbons to power them will save the planet and Ottawa is there to help Albertans to transition from being rig pigs to hairdressers,” said Cooper. 

In his keynote address, Rufo outlined a plan for victory in the culture wars. He urged Canadian conservative activists to adopt aggressive tactics in challenging progressive policies, particularly in education and social services.

‘Cultural Marxism’

Other conservative thinkers, like Stockwell Day, a former federal Conservative politician, used a panel on energy security to talk about pet issues – such as a belief that his grandaughter’s desire to protect the bee population is tied to cultural Marxism. Day said he has a bee sting allergy.

“I said I had to eliminate that bee. She said you can’t, they are going extinct,” Day told the remaining crowd at the event.

“I’m telling you, our upcoming generation is seized by a mindset that is culturally Marxist, uninformed or wrongly informed on these issues,” he said. 

An article in the peer-reviewed publication Nature said that research suggests climate extremes are contributing to the decline of the bee population. Hive collapse was also raised as a concern nearly ten years ago by the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. 

The event was sponsored in part by Meta, who did not respond to questions regarding their sponsorship to DeSmog. Koch and the Modern Miracle Network are the other gold sponsors. 

The title sponsor for the event was Roll’n Oilfield Industries Ltd.

*This article has been updated to clarify Smith’s comments.