Ottawa’s intentional destruction of western wealth

From Canadians for Affordable Energy

Dan McTeague

Written By Dan McTeague

Even if it fails to hit its emissions targets (which it will,) the economic consequences of enacting this plan are very serious. It would make Canada the only country in the world which willingly and purposefully stifles its single largest revenue stream.

At this point, everyone in Canada has heard about the Carbon Tax and had a chance to experience its negative effects. But less has been said about another harmful policy dreamed up by the Trudeau government — the Emissions Cap on the oil and gas sector. Just like the Carbon Tax, the Emissions Cap is part of Trudeau’s larger program to try and achieve “Net Zero” greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050, which will have no positive impact on the environment, but which will be ruinous to Canada’s natural resource sector and to the national economy.

In their 2021 platform, the Liberals made a commitment to “cap and cut emissions from the oil and gas sector” and proclaimed that that industry must reduce emissions “at a pace and scale needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.” As promised, in December 2023 the Trudeau government proposed an Emissions Cap to reduce GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector by 42 percent by 2030. Keep in mind Canada contributes only 1.5% of global emissions, so this plan, even if accomplished, would reduce global emissions by less than one half of one percent.

Even if it fails to hit its emissions targets (which it will,) the economic consequences of enacting this plan are very serious. It would make Canada the only country in the world which willingly and purposefully stifles its single largest revenue stream. After all, the oil and gas industry generates $45 billion per year in annual economic activity, and contributes $170 billion per year to the GDP.

But don’t take my word for it. According to a Deloitte report commissioned by the Government of Alberta, an Emissions Cap would lead to a 10% decrease in Alberta’s oil production and a 16% decrease in conventional natural gas production. Fossil fuel production would decrease in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland as well. Other industries connected to the oil and gas sector such as the mining, refinery products, and utilities are also expected to be impacted and will experience a decrease in output in Alberta and the rest of Canada.

The report goes on to state that in 2040 “Alberta’s GDP is estimated to be lower by 4.5% and Canada’s GDP by 1.0% compared to the baseline.”

It notes that because it is assumed that “the Cap is a permanent measure, the shift in the output of the oil and gas sector and associated losses are permanent and accumulate over time. Cumulatively, over the 2030 to 2040 period, we estimate that real GDP in Alberta is $191 billion lower and real GDP in the Rest of Canada is $91 billion lower, compared to the baseline scenario ($2017 dollars).”

Of course, the environmentalists will crow that the oil and gas industry is dying anyway and the demand for oil and gas around the world is slowly decreasing, but this is simply not true.

Global demand for oil and gas is only growing and will continue to do so. According to the report, “Based on current policy and before the impact of the Cap, we expect: Oil production in Canada to increase by 27% by 2030 and 32% by 2040 from 2021 levels; and Gas production in Canada to increase by 10% by 2030 and 16% by 2040 from 2021 levels.”

And this isn’t the only study which projects negative outcomes from this policy. The Montreal Economic Institute (MEI) released a study which describes how the Trudeau government’s proposed Emissions Cap for the energy sector would “cost the Canadian economy between $44.8 billion and $79.3 billion a year” and would “cause substantial losses, without achieving any net reduction in global emission.”

You can read the study here.

Plus it is worth noting that this emissions cap will result in “substantial losses without achieving any net reduction in global emissions.”

Why? Because of the increase in global demands for oil and gas, we can either produce those resources here or get them from another country that has no environmental, much less labour standards, such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.

To add insult to injury for the oil and gas producing provinces, and as I’ve pointed out in the past, this cap on emissions would apply only to the oil and gas sector. This emissions cap would not apply to the concrete industry, the automotive industry, or the mining industry. And — surprise surprise — it certainly won’t apply to Montreal’s lucrative jet-building industry.

But take heed: this isn’t simply an Alberta issue. This is a Canadian issue and one that everyone in Canada should be concerned about.

The umbrella of Net Zero by 2050 is large and far reaching, and an emissions cap is simply one part of a multi-layered attack on our economy and way of life. Carbon taxes, layered on top of a Clean Fuel Standard, layered on top of pipeline blockages, layered on top of Bills C-48 and C-69, preventing oil from being shipped from other parts of the world — will run counter to our national interests, and endanger the Canadian way of life for generations to come.

If Canadians are now vehemently opposed to carbon taxes, as we suggested would be the case half a dozen years ago, wait for this unnecessary burden to befall them.

In the words made famous by the Canadian rock legend BTO, “You ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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Canada’s EV gamble is starting to backfire

Published on December 22, 2025

Dan McTeague

Things have only gone from bad to worse for the global Electric Vehicle industry. And that’s a problem for Canada, because successive Liberal governments have done everything in their power to hitch our cart to that horse.

Earlier this month, the Trump Administration rolled back more Biden-era regulations that effectively served as a back-door EV mandate in the United States. These rules mandated that all passenger cars be able to travel at least 65.1 miles (and for light trucks, 45.2 miles) per gallon of gasoline or diesel, by the year 2031. Since no Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicle could realistically conform to those standards, that would have essentially boxed them out of the market.

Trump’s rolling them back was a fulfillment of his campaign promise to end the Biden Administration’s stealth EV mandates. But it was also a simple recognition of the reality that EVs can’t compete on their own merits.

For proof of that, look no further than our second bit of bad news for EVs: Ford Motor Company has just announced a massive $19.5 billion write-down, almost entirely linked to its aggressive push into EVs. They’ve lost $13 billion on EVs in the past two years alone.

The company invested tens of billions on these go-carts, and lost their shirt when it turned out the market for them was miniscule.

Ford’s EV division president Andrew Frick explained, “Ford is following the customer. We are looking at the market as it is today, not just as everyone predicted it to be five years ago.”

Of course, five years ago, the market was assuming that government subsidies-plus-mandates would create a market for EVs at scale, which hasn’t happened.

As to what this portends for the market, the Wall Street Journal argued, “The company’s pivot from all-electric vehicles is a fresh sign that America’s roadways – after a push to remake them – will continue to look in the near future much like they do today, with a large number of gas-powered cars and trucks and growing use of hybrids.”

And that’s not just true in the U.S. Across the Atlantic, reports suggest the European Union is preparing to delay their own EV mandates to 2040. And the U.K.’s Labour government is considering postponing their own 2030 ICE vehicle ban to align with any EU change in policy.

It’s looking like fewer people around the world will be forced by their governments to buy EVs. Which means that fewer people will be buying EVs.

Now, that is a headache for Canada. Our leaders, at both the federal and provincial levels, have bet big on the success of EVs, investing billions in taxpayer dollars in the hopes of making Canada a major player in the global EV supply chain.

To bolster those investments, Ottawa introduced its Electric Vehicle mandate, requiring 100 per cent of new light-duty vehicle sales to be electric by 2035. This, despite the fact that EVs remain significantly more expensive than gas-and-diesel driven vehicles, they’re poorly suited to Canada’s vast distances and cold climate, and our charging infrastructure is wholly inadequate for a total transition to EVs.

But even if these things weren’t true, there still aren’t enough of us to make the government’s investment make sense. Their entire strategy depends on exporting to foreign markets that are rapidly cooling on EVs.

Collapsing demand south of the border – where the vast majority of the autos we build are sent – means that Canadian EVs will be left without buyers. And postponed (perhaps eventually canceled) mandates in Europe mean that we will be left without a fallback market.

Canadian industry voices are growing louder in their concern. Meanwhile, plants are already idling, scaling back production, or even closing, leaving workers out in the cold.

As GM Canada’s president, Kristian Aquilina, said when announcing her company’s cancellation of the BrightDrop Electric delivery van, “Quite simply, we just have not seen demand for these vehicles climb to the levels that we initially anticipated…. It’s simply a demand and a market-driven response.”

Prime Minister Mark Carney, while sharing much of the same environmental outlook as his predecessor, has already been compelled by economic realities to make a small adjustment – delaying the enforcement of the 2026 EV sales quotas by one year.

But a one-year pause doesn’t solve the problem. It kicks the can down the road.

Mr. Carney must now make a choice. He can double down on this troubled policy, continuing to throw good money after bad, endangering a lot of jobs in our automotive sector, while making transportation more expensive and less reliable for Canadians. Or he can change course: scrap the mandates, end the subsidies, and start putting people and prosperity ahead of ideology.

Here’s hoping he chooses the latter.

The writing is on the wall. Around the world, the forced transition to EVs is crashing into economic reality. If Canada doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll be left holding the bag.