Business
Bitter legacy hangs over today’s energy discussions between Quebec and N.L. premiers
Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey and Quebec Premier François Legault pose in the office of the premier at the Confederation Building, in St. John’s, on Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Daly
By Sarah Smellie in St. John’s
As Quebec Premier François Legault seeks a new energy deal with Newfoundland and Labrador, he faces a public in the Atlantic province scarred by the legacy of a pair of hydroelectric projects mired in missteps.
Legault travelled to St. John’s this week for discussions with Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Andrew Furey about the 1969 Churchill Falls hydroelectric energy deal — and what will come after it ends in 2041. The lopsided deal heavily favours Quebec, and has left a lasting bitterness in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The two leaders are scheduled to speak with reporters later on Friday after the meeting.
Jeff Webb, a historian at Memorial University, says some residents of Newfoundland and Labrador think the province wouldn’t have endured the “humiliation” of needing equalization payments from the federal government if the Churchill Falls agreement had more evenly served both provinces.
“It does speak to people’s sense that this is something that’s always been rightly ours, and it’s been stolen,” Webb said in a recent interview.
Decades later, that hostility drove people in Newfoundland and Labrador to embrace the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project, which is long delayed and draining the provincial purse, Webb said.
The 1969 Churchill Falls deal allows Quebec’s provincially owned hydroelectric utility, Hydro-Québec, to purchase 85 per cent of the electricity generated by the dam in Labrador, and therefore reap most of the profits. As of 2019, the deal had yielded close to $28 billion in profits to Quebec, and about $2 billion for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Under the agreement, Hydro-Québec pays a fixed price of 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour for Churchill Falls power. By comparison, the utility said in a news release this week it made an average of 8.2 cents per kilowatt hour on power it sold outside the province in 2022. Hydro-Québec made a record-breaking income of $4.6 billion last year, the release said.
The Innu of Uashat mak Mani-utenam in Quebec filed a $2.2-billion lawsuit against Hydro-Québec earlier this year, claiming the Churchill Falls hydroelectric station has destroyed a significant part of their traditional territory. In 2020, the Innu Nation in Labrador launched a $4-billion lawsuit against Hydro-Québec and Churchill Falls (Labrador) Corp., a subsidiary of Newfoundland and Labrador Hydro, for the ecological and cultural damage caused by the damming of the upper Churchill River in the early 1970s.
Pam Frampton, who retired in 2021 as the managing editor of The Telegram newspaper in St. John’s, said she grew up under the shadow of Churchill Falls.
“There was always these associated feelings of shame and bitterness, and the feeling that we had been duped,” Frampton said in an interview.
Frampton said she believes the province would be in a completely different economic position now if the Churchill Falls arrangement had not been so skewed.
“Wanting to give Quebec the middle finger, if you will, was a part of the impetus behind Muskrat Falls,” Frampton said. “I think if we had a fair day’s deal with (Churchill Falls), we wouldn’t have been so hell-bent on getting (Muskrat Falls) developed at any cost.”
Like the Churchill Falls project, the Muskrat Falls development harnesses the power of the Churchill River, in Labrador, and it also sits on traditional Innu territory. It was green-lit in December of 2012 after much trumpeting and fanfare by the Progressive Conservative government at the time, particularly by premier Danny Williams, who quit politics in late 2010.
Muskrat Falls has been disastrous for the province’s finances and morale. Its price tag now sits at more than $13 billion, a figure Andrew Furey described in 2021 as “an anchor around the collective souls of Newfoundland and Labradorians.”
Legault has said he wants a “win-win” deal for Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador — and has even suggested paying the province more for electricity before the current deal ends in 2041.
Frampton said the Quebec premier needs to know that the people of Newfoundland and Labrador are hardened and still smarting from both projects.
“I think he needs to know that, going in, we are gun shy, and for good reason,” she said. “He should expect us to ask the hard questions. And I certainly hope to God our government does, on our behalf.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 24, 2023.
Carbon Tax
The book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read

By Franco Terrazzano
Prime Minister Mark Carney wrote a 500-page book praising carbon taxes.
Well, I just wrote a book smashing through the government’s carbon tax propaganda.
It tells the inside story of the fight against the carbon tax. And it’s THE book the carbon taxers don’t want you to read.
My book is called Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax.
Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax
Every now and then, the underdog wins one.
And it looks like that’s happening in the fight against the carbon tax.
It’s not over yet, but support for the carbon tax is crumbling. Some politicians vow to scrap it. Others hide behind vague plans to repackage it. But virtually everyone recognizes support for the current carbon tax has collapsed.
It wasn’t always this way.
For about a decade now, powerful politicians, government bureaucrats, academics, media elites and even big business have been pushing carbon taxes on the people.
But most of the time, politicians never asked the people if they supported carbon taxes. In other words, carbon taxes, and the resulting higher gas prices and heating bills, were forced on us.
We were told it was good for us. We were told carbon taxes were inevitable. We were told politicians couldn’t win elections without carbon taxes, even though the politicians that imposed them didn’t openly run on them. We were told that we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to leave a healthy environment for our kids and grandkids. We were told we needed to pay carbon taxes if we wanted to be respected in the international community.
In this decade-long fight, it would have been understandable if the people had given up and given in to these claims. It would have been easier to accept what the elites wanted and just pay the damn bill. But against all odds, ordinary Canadians didn’t give up.
Canadians knew you could care about the environment and oppose carbon taxes. Canadians saw what they were paying at the gas station and on their heating bills, and they knew they were worse off, regardless of how many politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and academics tried to convince them otherwise. Canadians didn’t need advanced degrees in economics, climate science or politics to understand they were being sold a false bill of goods.
Making it more expensive for a mom in Port Hope to get to work, or grandparents in Toronto to pay their heating bill, or a student in Coquitlam to afford food won’t reduce emissions in China, Russia, India or the United States. It just leaves these Canadians, and many like them, with less money to afford everything else.
Ordinary Canadians understood carbon taxes amount to little more than a way for governments to take more money from us and dictate how we should live our lives. Ordinary Canadians also saw through the unfairness of the carbon tax.
Many of the elites pushing the carbon tax—the media, politicians, taxpayer-funded professors, laptop activists and corporate lobbyists—were well off and wouldn’t feel the brunt of carbon taxes. After all, living in a downtown condo and clamouring for higher carbon taxes doesn’t require much gas, diesel or propane.
But running a business, working in a shop, getting kids to soccer and growing food on the farm does. These are the Canadians the political class forgot about when pushing carbon taxes. These are the Canadians who never gave up. These are the Canadians who took time out of their busy lives to sign petitions, organize and attend rallies, share posts on social media, email politicians and hand out bumper stickers.
Because of these Canadians, the carbon tax could soon be swept onto the ash heap of history. I wrote this book for two reasons.
The first is because these ordinary Canadians deserve it. They worked really hard for a really long time against the odds. When all the power brokers in government told them, “Do what we say—or pay,” they didn’t give up. They deserve to know the time and effort they spent fighting the carbon tax mattered. They deserve all the credit.
Thank you for everything you did.
The second reason I wrote this book is so people know the real story of the carbon tax. The carbon tax was bad from the start and we fought it from the start. By reading this book, you will get the real story about the carbon tax, a story you won’t find anywhere else.
This book is important because if the federal Liberals’ carbon tax is killed, the carbon taxers will try to lay blame for their defeat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. They will try to say that carbon taxes are a good idea, but Trudeau bungled the policy or wasn’t a good enough salesman. They will try to revive the carbon tax and once again make you pay more for gas, groceries, and home heating.
Just like with any failed five-year plan, there is a lingering whiff among the laptop class and the taxpayer-funded desk rulers that this was all a communication problem, that the ideal carbon tax hasn’t been tried yet. I can smell it outside my office building in Ottawa, where I write these words. We can’t let those embers smoulder and start a fire again.
This book shows why the carbon tax is and always will be bad policy for ordinary Canadians.
Franco’s note: You can pre-order a copy of my new book, Axing the Tax: The Rise and Fall of Canada’s Carbon Tax, here: https://www.amazon.ca/Axing-
2025 Federal Election
Poilievre To Create ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor

From Conservative Party Communications
Poilievre will create the ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to rapidly approve & build the infrastructure we need to end our energy dependence on America so we can stand up to Trump from a position of strength.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today he will create a ‘Canada First’ National Energy Corridor to fast-track approvals for transmission lines, railways, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure across Canada in a pre-approved transport corridor entirely within Canada, transporting our resources within Canada and to the world while bypassing the United States. It will bring billions of dollars of new investment into Canada’s economy, create powerful paycheques for Canadian workers, and restore our economic independence.
“After the Lost Liberal decade, Canada is poorer, weaker, and more dependent on the United States than ever before,” said Poilievre. “My ‘Canada First National Energy Corridor’ will enable us to quickly build the infrastructure we need to strengthen our country so we can stand on our own two feet and stand up to the Americans.”
In the corridor, all levels of government will provide legally binding commitments to approve projects. This means investors will no longer face the endless regulatory limbo that has made Canadians poorer. First Nations will be involved from the outset, ensuring that economic benefits flow directly to them and that their approval is secured before any money is spent.
Between 2015 and 2020, Canada cancelled 16 major energy projects, resulting in a $176 billion hit to our economy. The Liberals killed the Energy East pipeline and passed Bill C-69, the “No-New-Pipelines” law, which makes it all but impossible to build the pipelines and energy infrastructure we need to strengthen the Canadian economy. And now, the PBO projects that the ‘Carney cap’ on Canadian energy will reduce oil and gas production by nearly 5%, slash GDP by $20.5 billion annually, and eliminate 54,400 full-time jobs by 2032. An average mine opening lead time is now nearly 18 years—23% longer than Australia and 38% longer than the US. As a result of the Lost Liberal Decade, Canada now ranks 23rd in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index for 2024, a seven-place drop since 2015.
“In 2024, Canada exported 98% of its crude oil to the United States. This leaves us too dependent on the Americans,” said Poilievre. “Our Canada First National Energy Corridor will get us out from under America’s thumb and enable us to build the infrastructure we need to sell our natural resources to new markets, bring home jobs and dollars, and make us sovereign and self-reliant to stand up to Trump from a position of strength.”
Mark Carney’s economic advice to Justin Trudeau made Canada weaker while he and his rich friends made out like bandits. While he advised Trudeau to cancel Canadian energy projects, his own company spent billions on pipelines in South America and the Middle East. And unlike our competitors Australia and America, which work with builders to get projects approved, Mark Carney and Steven Guilbeault’s radical “keep-it-in-the-ground” ideology has blocked development, killed jobs, and left Canada dependent on foreign imports.
“The choice is clear: a fourth Liberal term that will keep our resources in the ground and keep us weak and vulnerable to Trump’s threats, or a strong new Conservative government that will approve projects, build an economic fortress, bring jobs and dollars home, and put Canada First—For a Change.”
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