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Canada’s flippant rejection of our generous natural resource inheritance

Published

9 months ago

8 minute read

From the Macdonald Laurier Institute

By David Polansky

The fanaticism of environmental elitists has made people unwilling to discuss the serious human and economic costs of poorly considered environmental policies.

Strategic energy resources have long been associated with some of the world’s most odious regimes. Above the surfaces that cover rich mineral and fossil fuel deposits one finds religious fanatics, brutal tyrants, and corrupt kleptocracies. And yet with one resource rich nation in particular we find not Wahhabism or gangsterism but Mounties and maple syrup.

Canada is the world’s second-largest country and its lands and territorial waters hold some of the world’s most substantial oil and gas reserves. Looking at its energy policies, one might think it was Belgium. Canada’s resource wealth would seem to be a case of the good guys winning for once. Why then does Canada flee in shame from its geological (and geopolitical) situation?

The answer is that Canada’s elites have long ceased to think in terms of its national interests or fiscal priorities but have adopted a naïve environmental dogmatism. Since it ratified the Paris Agreement in 2015, Canada has embraced an ambitious, top-down, international agenda to achieve “net-zero” emissions and limit global climate change.

But the fact is that, despite its size, In absolute terms, its output has risen marginally over the past half century, even as its population has nearly doubled. And embracing this climate agenda is hardly a perfunctory matter: it will continue to result in declining incomes for the average Canadian as well as a weakened trade balance for Canada as a whole. Canada’s economy is being sacrificed on the altar of elite preferences divorced from the realities of how Canadians actually heat our homes or put food on our tables.

An honest assessment of Canada’s flippant rejection of its generous natural resource inheritance looks more like serial masochism than virtue.

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the global sanctions it triggered, The irony is that with so much of Russia’s supply coming offline, Canada could have had a remarkable opportunity to fill the vacuum with its own production capacity.

Despite being the world’s sixth-largest producer of natural gas, Canada lacks even a single export terminal for LNG. When critics of Canadian LNG production pointed to the unfeasibility of meeting overseas demand, despite the entreaties of the Germans and other Europeans, they were only technically correct. Canada couldn’t easily meet overseas demand because our regulatory regime has held up the construction of as many as 18 proposed LNG projects over the past decade, largely due to climate concerns.

Ironically, Germany—the continent’s greatest industrial power—needed to reactivate discontinued coal plants to meet its energy demands (hardly an ideal outcome from an environmental standpoint).

Much of the shortfall caused by sanctions on Russia was also made up by LNG contributions from Norway—whose leaders have maintained that reducing LNG output would only cede the market to authoritarian regimes with weaker regulatory controls around their energy industries from both environmental and human rights standpoints. Thankfully, Norway’s government moved forward with LNG production and export despite past pressure from environmentalist in the European Union that attempted to curtail its fossil fuel extraction.

Canada could have followed Norway’s level-headed approach and in that could have helped replace Russian oil in the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion. The curtailing of Canada’s energy infrastructure is not imposed by a physical limitation in the world, nor was it commanded from the heavens; it was ordered by the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act of 2021, supplemented by ambitious plans promulgated by Ottawa to reshape the institutions and practices of the entire country in pursuit of this quixotic goal. Not just the oil-and-gas sector, but housing, construction, agriculture, etc. must bend before Net Zero.

One can already hear activist outrage that, “to oppose this agenda is to choose temporary profits over the preservation of human life and the planet that supports it.” This rhetoric has proven effective in advancing environmental policies but it is also a false dichotomy, as it treats the dilemma as one of “good vs. greed” rather than one of complex competing goods.

A society that has signed on to this sort of imposed austerity is one with less money for infrastructure, entrepreneurship, healthcare, and defense. A lack of investment in these sectors also brings serious and immediate human costs. And further, the real issue is not the value of environmental stewardship or of taking steps to moderate consumption—both of which are worthy goals in and of themselves—but of blindly adhering to preselected targets at all costs. These apparently unassailable commitments have deprived Canada of the kind of flexible management of strategic interests that prudent political leadership requires.

Indeed, the unrealism of these climate ideals has produced systemic dissembling across the country’s major institutions, given the pressure to comply regardless of the efficacy of their practices. In other words, the fanaticism of environmental elitists has made people unwilling to debate the issues at hand or to even discuss the serious human and economic costs of poorly considered environmental policies.

The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) model has had the effect of placing certain questions effectively beyond the reach of politics. But questions of policy—as environmental and energy questions surely are—are by their nature political; they have inevitable tradeoffs that should be a matter of debate with an eye to our collective interests.

Instead, we have an intolerant environmental elitism that obstructs the open and honest public deliberation that is the hallmark of democratic politics. A more truthful and practical approach wouldn’t necessarily promote any one policy, but it would allow for public discussion that recognizes the genuine toll that environmental policy takes on Canada’s domestic well-being and our standing in the world.

David Polansky is a Toronto-based writer and political theorist. Read him at strangefrequencies.co or find him on X @polanskydj.

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Carbon tax bureaucracy costs taxpayers $800 million

Published on November 19, 2024

By

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Ryan Thorpe

The cost of administering the federal carbon tax and rebate scheme has risen to $283 million since it was imposed in 2019, according to government records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

By 2030, the cost of administering the carbon tax is expected to total $796 million, according to the records.

“Not only does the carbon tax make our gas, heating and groceries more expensive, but taxpayers are also hit with a big bill to fund Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s battalion of carbon tax bureaucrats,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Trudeau should make life more affordable and slash the cost of the bureaucracy by scrapping the carbon tax.”

The government records were released in response to an order paper question from Conservative MP John Barlow (Foothills).

The carbon tax and rebate scheme cost taxpayers $84 million in 2023, according to the records.

There were 461 federal bureaucrats tasked with administering the carbon tax and rebate scheme last year, according to the records.

The CTF previously reported administering the carbon tax cost taxpayers $199 million between 2019 and 2022.

Projected costs for administering the carbon tax and rebate scheme between 2024 and 2030 are $513 million, according to the records.

That would bring total administration costs for the carbon tax and rebate scheme up to $796 million by 2030.

But the true hit to taxpayers is even higher, as the records do not include costs associated with the Fuel Charge Tax Credit for Farmers or the Canada Carbon Rebate for Small Businesses.

“It’s magic math to believe the feds can raise taxes, skim hundreds-of-millions off the top to hire hundreds of new bureaucrats and then somehow make everyone better off with rebates,” Terrazzano said.

The carbon tax will cost the average household up to $399 this year more than the rebates, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, the government’s independent, non-partisan budget watchdog.

The PBO also notes that, “Canada’s own emissions are not large enough to materially impact climate change.”

The government also charges its GST on top of the carbon tax. The PBO report shows this carbon tax-on-tax will cost taxpayers $400 million this year. That money isn’t rebated back to Canadians.

The carbon tax currently costs 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

By 2030, the carbon tax will cost 37 cents per litre of gasoline, 45 cents per litre of diesel and 32 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

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Economy

COP 29 leaders demand over a $1 trillion a year in climate reparations from ‘wealthy’ nations. They don’t deserve a nickel.

Published on November 16, 2024

By

From Energy Talking Points

The injustice of climate reparations

COP 29 is calling for over $1 trillion in annual climate reparations

  • A major theme of COP 29 is that the world should set a “New Collective Quantified Goal” wherein successful nations pay poor nations over $1 trillion a year to 1) make up for climate-related harm and 2) build them new “green energy” economies. In other words, climate reparations.¹
  • What would $1 trillion a year in climate reparations mean for you and your family?Assuming the money was paid equally by households considered high income (>$50 per day), your household would have to pay more than $5,000 a year in climate reparations taxes!²
  • Climate reparations are based on two false assumptions:1. Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have made the world worse for poor countries.

    2. The poor world’s main problem is dealing with climate change, which wealth transfers will help them with.

But free, fossil-fueled countries have made life better for poor countries

  • Free, wealthy countries, through their fossil fuel use, have not made the world worse for poor countries—they have made it far, far better.Observe what has happened to global life expectancies and income as fossil fuel use has risen. Life has gotten much better for everyone.³
  • The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has improved life worldwide because by using fossil fuel energy to be incredibly productive, we have 1) made all kinds of goods cheaper and 2) been able to engage in life-saving aid, particularly in the realms of food, medicine, and sanitation.
  • Without the historic use of fossil fuels by the wealthy world, there would be no super-productive agriculture to feed 8 billion humans, no satellite-based weather warning systems, etc. Most of the individuals in poor countries would not even be alive today.

Free, fossil-fueled countries have made the poor safer from climate

  • The wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has been particularly beneficial in the realm of climate.Over the last 100 years, the death rate from climate-related disasters plummeted by 98% globally.

    A big reason is millions of lives saved from drought via fossil-fueled crop transport.⁴
  • The “climate reparations” movement ignores the fact that the wealthy world’s fossil fuel use has made life better, including safer from climate, in the poor world.This allows it to pretend that the poor world’s main problem is dealing with rising CO2 levels.

The poor world’s problem is poverty, not rising CO2 levels

  • The poor world’s main problem is not rising CO2 levels, it is poverty—which is caused by lack of freedom, including the crucial freedom to use fossil fuels.Poverty makes everything worse, including the world’s massive natural climate danger and any danger from more CO2.
  • While it’s not true that the wealthy world has increased climate danger in the poor world—we have reduced it—it is true that the poor world is more endangered by climate than the wealthy world is.The solution is for the poor to get rich. Which requires freedom and fossil fuels.⁵

Escaping poverty requires freedom and fossil fuels

  • Every nation that has risen out of poverty has done so via pro-freedom policies—specifically, economic freedom. 

    That’s how resource-poor places like Singapore and Taiwan became prosperous. Resource-rich places like Congo have struggled due to lack of economic freedom.

  • Even China, which is unfree in many ways (including insufficient protections against pollution) dramatically increased its standard of living via economic freedom—particularly in the realm of industrial development where it is now in many ways much freer than the US and Europe.
  • A crucial freedom involved in rising prosperity has been the freedom to use fossil fuels.Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy, providing energy that’s low-cost, reliable, versatile, and scalable to billions of people in thousands of places.⁶
  • Time and again nations have increased their prosperity, including their safety from climate, via economic freedom and fossil fuels.Observe the 7X increase in fossil fuel use in China and India over the past 4 decades, which enabled them to industrialize and prosper.⁷
  • For the world’s poorest people to be more prosperous and safer from climate, they need more freedom and more fossil fuels.The “climate reparations” movement seeks to deny them both.
  • The wealthy world should communicate to the poor world that economic freedom is the path to prosperity, and encourage the poor world to reform its cultural and political institutions to embrace economic freedom—including fossil fuel freedom.Our leaders are doing the opposite.

Climate reparations pay off dictators to take away fossil fuel freedom

  • Instead of promoting economic freedom, including fossil fuel freedom, wealthy climate reparations advocates like Antonio Guterres are offering to entrench anti-freedom regimes by paying off their dictators and bureaucrats to eliminate fossil fuel freedom.This is disgusting.⁸
  • The biggest victim of “climate reparations” will be the world’s poorest countries, whose dictators will be paid off to prevent the fossil fuel freedom that has allowed not just the US and Europe but also China and India to dramatically increase their prosperity.
  • The biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be China, which is already emitting more CO2 than the US and Europe combined. (Though less per capita.)While we flagellate and cripple ourselves, China will use fossil fuels in its quest to become the world’s superpower.⁹
  • The second biggest beneficiary of “climate reparations” will be corrupt do-gooders who get to add anti-fossil-fuel strings to “reparations” dollars and dictate how it’s spent—which will surely include lots of dollars for unreliable solar panels and wind turbines made in China.

Leaders must reject reparations and champion fossil fuel freedom

  • We need leaders in the US and Europe who proudly:1. Champion the free world’s use of fossil fuels as an enormous good for the world, including its climate safety.

    2. Encourage the poor world to embrace economic freedom and fossil fuels.

    Tell your Representative to do both.

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1  Scientific American – COP27 Summit Yields ‘Historic Win’ for Climate Reparations but Falls Short on Emissions Reductions
2  Global population was about 8.02 billion in 2023.

World Bank data

About 7% of world population are considered high income, which translates into about 562 million individuals. Considering 3 people per average household in high income households, this translates into about 187 million households.
Pew Research – Are you in the global middle class? Find out with our income calculator

$1 trillion per annum paid by 187 million households means the average household would pay about $5,300 per year.

3  Maddison Database 2010 at the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen
4  UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 in per year during the 2010s.

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

5  UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates come from World Bank Data.

6  Our World in Data – Energy Production and Consumption
7  BP – Statistical Review of World Energy
8  UN News – ‘Pay up or humanity will pay the price’, Guterres warns at COP29 climate summit
9  Our World in Data – Annual CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, by world region
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