Energy
Canadian policymakers should quickly rethink our energy and climate policies
From the Fraser Institute
In the wee hours of Nov. 6, Donald Trump provided a subtle but clear signal about the direction he will pursue as president regarding climate policies. In his victory speech he gave a nod to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to join forces with MAGA saying, “He wants to do some things, and we’re gonna let him go to it. I just said, but Bobby, leave the oil to me. We have more liquid gold, oil and gas. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world. More than Saudi Arabia. We have more than Russia. Bobby, stay away from the liquid gold.”
People need to understand that Trump 2.0 is a different entity. He did not build his comeback movement by pandering or watering down his priorities. He reached out and either won people over to his side or sent them packing. A major example of this was Elon Musk, who during the first Trump administration resigned from the White House business advisory council to protest Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate treaty. Now Musk is all-in on MAGA and is set to play a lead role in a major downsizing of the administration.
When Trump secured the endorsement of Bobby Kennedy it was based on issues on which they could find agreement, including anti-corruption efforts and addressing the chronic disease burden. But Kennedy had to leave his environmentalism at the door, at least the climate activist part of it.
Trump’s remarks about energy during the campaign were unmistakeable. When he made the quip about wanting to be dictator for a day it was to close the border and “drill drill drill.” When asked how he would reduce the cost of living he said he would rapidly expand energy production with a target of cutting energy costs by at least 50 per cent. And on election night he reiterated: the United States has the oil, the liquid gold, and they’re going to use it.
U.S. climate policy will soon no longer be a thing. The Biden administration chose to focus on extravagant green energy subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. They were easy to bring in and will be just as easy for Trump to eliminate, especially the ones targeted at Democrat special interest groups. The incoming Trump administration will not settle simply for stalling on new climate action, it’s more likely to try to dismantle the entire climate bureaucracy.
In 2016 Trump did not understand the Washington bureaucracy and its ability to thwart a president’s plans. He learned many hard lessons merely trying to survive lawfare, resistance and open insubordination. It took three years for him to get a few people installed in senior positions in the climate area who could begin to push back against the vast regulatory machinery. But they simply did not have the time nor the capacity to get anything done.
This time should be different. Trump’s team has spent years developing legal and regulatory strategies to bring full executive authority back to the Oval Office so it can execute on plans quickly and efficiently. His top priority is hydrocarbon development and his team is in no mood for compromise. As to the climate issue, Trump recently remarked “Who the hell cares?”
That’s the reality. Now policymakers in Canada must decide what will be appropriate to ask of Canadians in terms of shouldering the costs of climate policies.
There’s one legal issue that Trump has thus far not addressed but that his administration will need to confront if it wants to drill drill drill. There has been an explosion of climate liability lawsuits in U.S. courts, where states, municipalities and activist groups sue major players in the fossil fuel industry demanding massive financial damages for alleged climate harms. There’s even a new branch of climate science called Extreme Event Attribution, which was explicitly developed to promote flimsy and arbitrary statistical analyses that support climate liability cases. Such cases are also popping up in Canada, including the Mathur case in Ontario, which the appellate court recently brought back from defeat.
Both Canada and the U.S. must act at the legislative level to extinguish climate liability in law. There is no good argument for letting this play out in the courts. The cases are prima facie preposterous: the emitters of carbon dioxide are the fuel users, not the producers, so liability—if it exists—should be attached to consumers. But then we would have an unworkable situation where everyone is liable to everyone, each person equally a victim and a tortfeasor. Climate policy belongs in the legislature not the courts and the “climate liability” movement is simply a massive waste of time and resources. It must be stopped.
Canada was already out of step with the U.S. in its mad pursuit of the federal Emission Reduction Plan. While the carbon tax is top of mind for voters, it’s but a small part of a larger and costlier regulatory onslaught, most recently supplemented by a new emissions cap on the western oil and gas sector. With the U.S. poised to sharply change direction, Canada now needs a complete rethink of our own energy and climate policies.
Author:
Energy
Federal Government Suddenly Reverses on Critical Minerals – Over Three Years Too Late – MP Greg McLean
From Energy Now
By Calgary MP Greg McLean
Government in Full Reverse
Canada-U.S. Trade Relations is obviously the most pressing issue facing Canadians today.
It’s important to remember how we arrived at this point, but also to question the sincerity of the Liberal Ministers and leadership contenders who are now posing solutions, such as:
- We need to diversify our resource trade
- We need to build pipelines and infrastructure to get our exports to tidewater
- We need to streamline our regulatory burden that stands in the way of development
- We need to halt the escalating carbon tax
- We need to reverse the capital gains tax increase
The Liberals are turning themselves inside out on the policy choices they have made over nine years, and put Canada in a precarious economic position vis-à-vis our trade position.
If you believe what they are saying now, these Liberal Ministers and leadership contenders are saying that Canada needs EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they have delivered over these past nine years.
I can’t comment on whether these NEW Liberal policy positions completely lack sincerity, or whether they are the result of a ‘deathbed conversion’, but nine years of moving in the exact opposite direction to their new words has led Canada to where it is today – and that is nine lost years for Canadians, our prosperity, and our role in a complex world.
Below is another example of a specific morphing of a Liberal policy – to the one I helped put forth – 3 ½ years ago – regarding Canada’s policy on critical minerals.
Minister Late to Critical Mineral Strategy
Here’s a gem of wisdom from December’s Fall Economic Statement:
Canada will work with the United States and other likeminded partners to address the impacts of non-market policies and practices that unduly distort critical mineral prices. This includes ensuring that market participants recognize the value of critical minerals produced responsibly, with due regard for high environmental standards and labour practices.
Then, on January 16th, the following from Canada’s Natural Resource Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson:
During a panel discussion in Washington on Wednesday, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson proposed that enforcing a floor on metals prices could be “one of the centerpieces of the conversations we would then be having at the G7” summit later this year.
Western nations have long warned that China’s dominance in everything from nickel to lithium has let the country’s producers flood the market with supply, thereby keeping prices artificially low for competitors. Wilkinson has touted price floors as a way to combat that market control.
What a great idea!
Here’s the relevant excerpt from June, 2021, from a dissenting report on the Natural Resources Committee, when I served as my party’s critic, in contrast to the government’s critical minerals approach at that time:
Recommendation 4: Coordinate with our allies to establish a dedicated supply stock of critical minerals, possibly through a physical storage and floor pricing mechanism for visibility and pricing purposes.
Excerpt: Canada is too small of a market to undertake this effort on its own, but it can play a key role with its longstanding leadership as the mining jurisdiction of choice in the world. Canada’s pre-eminent role as a financing jurisdiction for international mining is well understood. Although we are at the early stages of losing this historical leadership to Australia, acting quickly to solidify Canada’s leadership will be a strong signal. Australia and Europe have already established critical mineral strategies to offset the dominance of the market that China has exerted. At the very least, Canada’s coordination needs to include the United States, and probably Mexico (through CUSMA), as the ongoing funding of a critical mineral supply may require backstopping developments with a price amelioration mechanism. In essence, a floor price to ensure the protection of critical mineral developments from manipulating price volatility – and which has held back developments, or caused the insolvency of several of these developments, due to non-transparent world market pricing mechanisms. … Establishing a steady supply of these critical minerals will lead to more value-added opportunities, in conjunction with our trade partners.
Conservative Dissenting Recommendations
My question to the Minister: ‘What took you so long?’
This approach was presented three and a half years ago – and the Government chose to ignore it then.
No surprise now, perhaps, as we’ve seen this Minister flip-flop on so many of the nonsense policies he’s put forth or acquiesced in at Cabinet:
- The Clean Electricity Regulations (still opaque)
- Canada’ role in shipping hydrocarbons to the world
- Building energy infrastructure
To say nothing of the various Cabinet decisions he has been a part of that have led to Canada’s current weak negotiating position with our allies. We effectively have not had a Minister of Natural Resources under his tenure.
Nothing topped it off more succinctly than his speech at the World Petroleum Show, held in Calgary in September 2023, when his remarks on behalf of the Government of Canada left industry participants around the world questioning whether the Minister was ‘tone-deaf’ or if, in fact, he knew anything about natural resources.
It seems his move to the position I promoted – three and a half years ago – shows that he’s finally listening and learning (or un-learning his previous narratives, perhaps)– but it’s quite late in the day. Time and our future have been wasted.
Canada’s wealth is based on its success as a trading nation. Canada is blessed with immense resources spread across a vast country. It has succeeded as a small, open economy with an enviable standard of living that has been able to provide what the world needs.
Canada has been stuck in a situation where it cannot complete nation‑building projects like the Canadian Pacific Railway that was completed in 1885, or the Trans Canada Highway that was completed in the 1960s. With the uncertainty of U.S. tariffs looming over our country and province, Canada needs to take bold action to revitalize the productivity and competitiveness of its economy – going east to west and not always relying on north-south trade. There’s no better time than right now to politically de-risk these projects.
A lack of leadership from the federal government has led to the following:
- Inadequate federal funding for trade infrastructure.
- A lack of investment is stifling the infrastructure capacity we need to diversify our exports. This is despite federally commissioned reports like the 2022 report by the National Supply Chain Task Force indicating the investment need will be trillions over the next 50 years.
- Federal red tape, like the Impact Assessment Act.
- Burdensome regulation has added major costs and significant delays to projects, like the Roberts Bank Terminal 2 project, a proposed container facility at Vancouver, which spent more than a decade under federal review.
- Opaque funding programs, like the National Trade Corridors Fund (NTCF).
- Which offers a pattern of unclear criteria for decisions and lack of response. This program has not funded any provincial highway projects in Alberta, despite the many applications put forward by the Government of Alberta. In fact, we’ve gone nearly 3 years without decisions on some project applications.
- Ineffective policies that limit economic activity.
- Measures that pit environmental and economic objectives in stark opposition to one another instead of seeking innovative win-win solutions hinder Canada’s overall productivity and investment climate. One example is the moratorium on shipping crude through northern B.C. waters, which effectively ended Enbridge’s Northern Gateway proposal and has limited Alberta’s ability to ship its oil to Asian markets.
In a federal leadership vacuum, Alberta has worked to advance economic corridors across Canada. In April 2023, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba signed an agreement to collaborate on joint infrastructure networks meant to boost trade and economic growth across the Prairies. Alberta also signed a similar economic corridor agreement with the Northwest Territories in July 2024. Additionally, Alberta would like to see an agreement among all 7 western provinces and territories, and eventually the entire country, to collaborate on economic corridors.
Through our collaboration with neighbouring jurisdictions, we will spur the development of economic corridors by reducing regulatory delays and attracting investment. We recognize the importance of working with Indigenous communities on the development of major infrastructure projects, which will be key to our success in these endeavours.
However, provinces and territories cannot do this alone. The federal government must play its part to advance our country’s economic corridors that we need from coast to coast to coast to support our economic future. It is time for immediate action.
Alberta recommends the federal government take the following steps to strengthen Canada’s economic corridors and supply chains by:
- Creating an Economic Corridor Agency to identify and maintain economic corridors across provincial boundaries, with meaningful consultation with both Indigenous groups and industry.
- Increasing federal funding for trade-enabling infrastructure, such as roads, rail, ports, in-land ports, airports and more.
- Streamlining regulations regarding trade-related infrastructure and interprovincial trade, especially within economic corridors. This would include repealing or amending the Impact Assessment Act and other legislation to remove the uncertainty and ensure regulatory provisions are proportionate to the specific risk of the project.
- Adjusting the policy levers that that support productivity and competitiveness. This would include revisiting how the federal government supports airports, especially in the less-populated regions of Canada.
To move forward expeditiously on the items above, I propose the establishment of a federal/provincial/territorial working group. This working group would be tasked with creating a common position on addressing the economic threats facing Canada, and the need for mitigating trade and trade-enabling infrastructure. The group should identify appropriate governance to ensure these items are presented in a timely fashion by relative priority and urgency.
Alberta will continue to be proactive and tackle trade issues within its own jurisdiction. From collaborative memorandums of understanding with the Prairies and the North, to reducing interprovincial trade barriers, to fostering innovative partnerships with Indigenous groups, Alberta is working within its jurisdiction, much like its provincial and territorial colleagues.
We ask the federal government to join us in a new approach to infrastructure development that ensures Canada is productive and competitive for generations to come and generates the wealth that ensures our quality of life is second to none.
-
Devin Dreeshen
Devin Dreeshen was sworn in as Minister of Transportation and Economic Corridors on October 24, 2022.
Germany’s Shocking War on Online Speech: Armed Police Raids for Online “Insults,” “Hate Speech,” and “Misinformation”
DOGE discovers $4.7T in untraceable U.S. Treasury payments
Canada badly misjudged the future of LNG
Dr. Deborah Birx Makes Two Shocking COVID Admissions
-
Censorship Industrial Complex1 day agoBipartisan US Coalition Finally Tells Europe, and the FBI, to Shove It
-
Business1 day agoNew climate plan simply hides the costs to Canadians
-
Health2 days agoTrudeau government buys 500k bird flu vaccines to be ‘ready’ for potential ‘health threats’
-
Carbon Tax2 days agoMark Carney has history of supporting CBDCs, endorsed Freedom Convoy crackdown
-
Business1 day agoArgentina’s Javier Milei gives Elon Musk chainsaw
-
Business2 days agoGovernment debt burden increasing across Canada
-
International2 days agoSenate votes to confirm Kash Patel as Trump’s FBI director
-
COVID-192 days agoRed Deer Freedom Convoy protestor Pat King given 3 months of house arrest