LATE TO THE PARTY: Liberal Resource Minister Minister Suddenly Discovers Canada Needs East-West Pipeline

On Thursday, February 6 federal energy and natural resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters about a brilliant idea he’d come up with. He said Canada should think about building an east-west oil pipeline. He claimed doing so could provide Ontario, Quebec and parts further east greater security of supply.

Furthermore, such a pipeline would eliminate the need to buy tanker loads of oil from places like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. And what’s more it could provide us with the opportunity to export Canadian oil to countries other than the US.

Talk about being late to the party. It’s as though the Energy East project never made it onto the national agenda.

Wilkinson told reporters how a pipeline like Enbridge’s Line 5 is vulnerable to shut down by US authorities. Line 5 carries oil from the prairies through the northern US Midwest before delivering it to the refinery and petrochemicals facilities at Sarnia, Ontario.

This is not breaking news. The Liberals have been well aware of the threat for years. Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer waged a well-publicized multi-year campaign to have Line 5 shut down.

According to a CBC report, Wilkinson said, “successive Canadian governments never really gave it much thought that a lot of the energy the country needs to power its economy flows through the U.S.”

That’s a stretch. He apparently doesn’t consider the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan to be Canadian governments. The real problem is Ottawa wasn’t listening when premiers Notley, Kenney, Smith, Wall and Moe explained the value of an all-Canadian Energy East pipeline. They also had plenty to say about the cancellation of Energy East in 2017 and the role Ottawa played by creating the regulatory approval quagmire that helped kill it.

No less puzzling is that Wilkinson imagines such a pipeline could ever be built under the BANANAs (build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anything) regulatory barriers implemented by the Liberals which make it next to impossible for anyone to build a new pipeline. When Jason Kenney referred to Bill C-69 as The No More Pipelines Bill he wasn’t just whistling Dixie.

The only major export pipeline to be built in the wake of C-69, was the Trans Mountain expansion (TMX). And it was only completed because the owner, the Government of Canada, was prepared to incur the staggering costs of navigating its own pipeline approval regulations. A pipeline originally budgeted to cost $6.8 billion wound up costing an additional $54 billion. Sane investors simply aren’t prepared to accept that level of unreasonable cost and uncertainty.

A first step in getting new pipelines built would be eliminating Bill C-69 along with Bill C-48, the West coast tanker ban. Wilkinson didn’t touch on those points when telling reporters about his bold new idea.

One has to wonder, after11 years of anti-oil and anti-pipeline policy making, if Wilkinson really means what he’s saying. Has he truly experienced a road to Damascus level conversion due to the threat of US tariffs?

Another plausible explanation for Wilkinson’s call for the resurrection of Energy East is that he’s seen the polling numbers. An Angus Reid poll conducted earlier this month shows 79% of Canadians from across the country support new oil and gas pipelines to tidewater on the east and west coasts. The poll also shows 74% of Quebec respondents now support the idea of building new pipelines to tidewater.

If those numbers hold, Canada’s next government could possibly revisit Energy East. If they succeeded in getting the line built it would represent the most visionary nation building project since the building of the trans-continental railway.

No less surprising is, despite the rise in public support for pipelines, Quebec Premier Francois Legault says he won’t accept a new oil pipeline in his province. Legault is out of step with Quebec opinion on more issues than pipelines. The separatist Parti Quebecois is currently leading Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec by 10 points in party preference polls. This is not to say the PQ is any more pipeline friendly.

After11 years of Liberal anti-oil and anti-pipeline policy making, Wilkinson is finally on the right side of the Energy East idea. Some might say better late than never—better to change one’s mind than to continue being wrong. Others will say it is a flip flop of epic proportions and questionable sincerity. Skeptical pundits will question whether Wilkinson’s new found fondness for pipelines is any more credible than Mark Carney’s pledge to get rid of the carbon tax.

Wilkinson is a bright man, so it is possible he has believed Energy East was a good idea for some time. Too bad he didn’t tell us sooner. He waited too long to come clean to expect electoral redemption.

Related Topics:#EnergyNow.CA #JimWarren EastWestPipeline feature JonathonWilkinson LateToTheParty LiberalEnergyPolicy LiberalResourceMinister

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As President Trump creates new economy, Trudeau government ‘pandering’ to globalists

Published on February 10, 2025

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Jordan Peterson in a February 5, 2025 video titled ‘Canada Must Offer Alberta More Than Trump Could’

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

“Enough idiot green moralizing, enough carbon tax. Enough bloody net-zero,” he said, adding, “how about this: enough multiculturalism and destruction of the Canadian identity.”

Well-known Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson had choice words for Canadian politicians last week, accusing them of “pandering” to elites and ruining the nation.

In the February 5 video entirely dedicated to the topic of Canadian politics, Peterson said that he is sick of “pathetic celebrity wannabe” politicians, a category in which he includes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who are “pandering” to the global elites at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Peterson, who is from Alberta, in particular defended his province from a continued push by the Liberal government to undermine its oil and gas industry, amidst a trade tariff dispute with the United States.

“Enough overt and covert attempts to destroy the basis of the economy of my fair and hard-working province,” said Peterson.

“Enough delaying critical infrastructure development and rejection of international trade offers for natural gas, oil, and coal. Enough treatment of the resource economy upon which Quebec in particular, so unacceptably depends as a moral pariah.”

Peterson also took issue with Trudeau’s unpopular carbon tax and the Liberal government’s ongoing promotion of DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) ideology.

“Enough idiot green moralizing, enough carbon tax. Enough bloody net-zero,” he said, adding, “how about this: enough multiculturalism and destruction of the Canadian identity.”

In recent weeks, the Trudeau government has been embroiled in a trade dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump, the latter threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods if border security and fentanyl trafficking is not taken more seriously.

Canada was given a 30-day reprieve from the 25 percent tariffs by Trump after Trudeau promised to increase border security and crack down on fentanyl making its way south.

Since taking office in 2015, the Trudeau government has continued to push a radical environmental agenda like the agendas being pushed by the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.” 

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been a fierce opponent of Trudeau’s green energy agenda and an advocate for the oil and gas industry.  

Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, with most of it being in Alberta. Unlike in other nations, Alberta’s industry is largely considered ethical.

This is not the first time Peterson has accused Trudeau and his government of working against the interests of Canada.

Last year, Peterson formally announced his departure from Canada in favor of moving to the United States, saying his birth nation has become a “totalitarian hell hole.” 

Banks

The Great Exodus from the Net Zero Banking Alliance has arrived

Published on February 9, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Gina Pappano

Next, we need a Great Exodus from net zero ideology

In 2021, all of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO, Scotiabank and RBC – signed onto the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).

U.N.-sponsored and Mark Carney-led, GFANZ is a sector-wide umbrella coalition whose goal is to accelerate global decarbonization and the emergence of a worldwide net zero global economy.

But now, in the first month of 2025, four of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO and Scotiabank – have announced their decision to exit the NZBA.

This came on the heels of similar announcements by six of the biggest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo as well as the investment firm BlackRock leaving the Asset Management subgroup of the GFANZ.

That group, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, has now suspended operations altogether, and the GFANZ and all of its subgroups are falling like a house of cards.

At InvestNow, the not-for-profit that I lead, we’re considering these developments a victory and a vindication of our work.

In November of 2024, we submitted shareholder proposals to Canada’s Big Five banks asking them to leave both the NZBA and the GFANZ. As of this writing, all but one of them have done just that.

But this is only a partial victory.

When they signed on to the NZBA, the banks pledged to align their lending, investment and banking activities with decarbonization goals, including achieving net zero emissions by 2050. They pledged to focus on higher emitting sectors first and foremost. In practice, this means they would be setting their sights on Canada’s natural resource sector.

That’s because the net zero ideology motivating these groups requires the drastic reduction of oil and gas production and use over a comparatively short period of time.

That is a serious threat to Canada since we’ve been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Hydrocarbon energy has become the backbone of our economy, and the war being waged against it has already made our lives harder and more expensive. Left unchecked, these difficulties will compound, with ruinous results.

In joining the NZBA, the Big Five Banks agreed to divest from oil and gas, eliminating projects and companies from the investment pool simply because of the sector they work in, as part of a long-term goal of totally decarbonizing the economy.

Presumably, having left the Alliance, those banks could now change course, increasing investment in and lending to oil and gas firms with an eye toward increasing the return on investment for their shareholders.

Except the banks have stressed that they have no intention of doing so. In the press releases and articles about leaving the NZBA, each bank emphasized that this move should not be interpreted as them abandoning net zero itself. All of these banks remain committed to aligning their activities with decarbonization, no matter the cost to Canada, the Canadian economy or the good of its citizens.

This means we still have work to do. While we applaud the banks for exiting the NZBA, we will continue to work to get them to leave behind the net zero ideology as well. Then, and only then, will we claim a full victory.

Gina Pappano is the former head of market intelligence at the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange and executive director of InvestNow , a non-profit dedicated to demonstrating that investing in Canada’s resource sectors helps Canada and the world. Join the movement and pass the InvestNow resolution at investnow.org.