Dan McTeague
COP28 – The grand delusion continues

From Canadians for Affordable Energy
Written By Dan McTeague
The 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) wrapped up this week in Dubai. That the two-week conference, whose object is to discuss the global phase-out of fossil fuels, is being held in one of the world’s top ten oil producers — the UAE — is only the first of COP’s absurdities.
The next is the sheer number of participants — more than 97,000 of them — flying to the desert, in most cases on the taxpayers’ dime, to talk about reducing carbon emissions in the hopes of cooling the planet.
The hyperbole from people such as Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, who said those at COP28 “are steering the course of our shared future but the science tells us we are in grave danger of bequeathing our children a completely unlivable world” is almost too much to bear.
And what did they actually accomplish? As has been the case for the past 27 conferences, very little. While there is a lot of grandstanding and speeches and promises from the 157 countries in attendance to phase out fossil fuels, no commitments were actually made.
Surely this comes as no surprise since all of the nations present run on fossil fuel users and have no real intention of abolishing them, especially not countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and India. There is no scenario where they would “phase out” the life blood of their economies for the sake of the quixotic goal of achieving Net Zero emissions so as to — maybe — reduce global temperatures by 1.5 degrees.
And as if to make the farce even more laughable, it has been announced that Azerbaijan will be the host for COP29. Oil, gas and related petroleum products account for 91% of Azerbaijan’s total exports. Is it at all likely that they will be getting rid of them anytime soon? Definitely not.
As was recently noted by Benny Peiser of Net Zero Watch, COP28 is happening while the Green Agenda is in deep crisis and is falling apart around the world.
- There is a massive backlash against the cost of Net Zero policies. Renewable energy projects have been scrapped including major wind projects in the US and the UK.
- Electric vehicle sales have slumped.
- Germany is facing an energy crisis, frantically bringing coal fired plants back into service to replace the energy lost when they shuttered their nuclear plants for nebulous environmental reasons.
- The Dutch Farmers party has made major gains in two successive elections after their environmentalist government in their obsession to achieve net zero tried to restrict them out of existence.
- Argentina has elected a new president who has called climate change a “socialist lie.” Even French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the EU to pump the breaks on net zero regulations.
Why? Because net zero policies are unpopular and damaging. It is all well and good to talk about targets and goals and objectives, but when rubber hits the road and daily lives are affected, that’s another story. People have come to see that pursuing these absurd policies comes at an enormous societal and economic cost.
If a country wants affordable, reliable power to keep the lights on and heat their homes, they need the baseload power that oil and natural gas provide.
Yet here in Canada the Trudeau government is doubling, no, tripling down on their punishing Net Zero Agenda.
Our environmental minister Steven Guilbeault even used COP28 as his stage to make two major regulatory announcements that will have a devastating effect on the Canadian economy.
Last week, he announced his methane emissions reduction plan and an emissions cap, without even consulting the leader of the province it would affect the most. Give me a break. The grandstanding, the virtue signaling — it would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging.
Canadians can’t afford groceries or pay their rent or buy homes. We are suffering an affordability crisis. The relentless taxation on our lives from a carbon tax to a second carbon tax (the Clean Fuel Standard), to Minister Guilbeault’s newest schemes, are all part of the Net Zero policies that are destroying our economy.
Remember this is all fuelled by the preposterous notion we can somehow affect the climate if we reduce our greenhouse gases from 1.4% of global emissions to 0.4%.
In light of all of that, the Trudeau government is more interested in how they are perceived on the world stage than how their policies affect the Canadians they are supposed to represent.
Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, to their credit, attended the conference with their own Alberta and Saskatchewan delegations to advocate for the industry that employs thousands of Canadians and is a major driver of the Canadian economy.
And, it should be taken as a compliment that Alberta was even given the “Fossil of the Day” award by activists at the summit for its temporary ban on large scale renewable projects.
At least Canada had a few representatives there with its best interest in mind, and that weren’t taken in by the grand delusion.
2025 Federal Election
When it comes to pipelines, Carney’s words flow both ways

Dan McTeague
Well, you’ve got to hand it to Mark Carney. Though he’s only just entered politics — after years of flirting with the idea, while serving on Team Trudeau behind-the-scenes — and despite the fact that he hasn’t been elected to anything yet, he’s become well versed in the ancient political art of speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Like many men seeking high office before him, Carney is happy to say to whoever happens to be in front of him whatever he thinks they want to hear, even if it contradicts what he said to someone else the day before.
Of course, that isn’t so easy to pull off these days. Nowadays pretty much everything a politician says in public is going to pop up on the internet within hours. Which is why it’s been so easy to keep tabs on Carney’s policy flip-flopping.
For just the latest example, last week in Calgary Carney opened his pitch to a sceptical province by saying, “You don’t need to tell me what Alberta is like. I’m from Alberta!” He proclaimed that “Canada has a tremendous opportunity to be the world’s leading energy superpower,” and that “we must invest in our natural strengths and ensure our economic sovereignty!” He promised to “identify projects of national interest,” and fast-track them, while acknowledging that “any major energy project that comes from this great province is going to pass the boundaries of other provinces.”
The implication was that voting for a Carney-led Liberal government would mean a major course correction from the ‘Lost Decade” of Liberal governance, that oil and gas from Alberta should be harnessed to power Canada to prosperity, with pipeline projects (maybe a revived Energy East) spanning every province (presumably over the objections of the government of Quebec, these being projects in the “national interest” and all), and the construction of terminals — of the type for which Trudeau previously said there was no “business case” — enabling us to get Canadian Natural Gas onto tankers bound for Europe and Asia. What else could he have meant by ‘global energy superpower,’ ‘self-sufficiency,’ and the promise to invest in Alberta’s energy infrastructure?
But then Carney found himself being interviewed in Montreal, and his approach was quite different. After his interviewer poked some fun at Carney’s tendency to crib policy proposals from the Conservatives — “do you find Mr. Poilievre has good ideas?” — Carney was asked about his “energy superpower” comments, and he hedged, saying that Canada should work to develop its own resources “if there is social acceptability.” Asked about pipelines specifically, Carney said “We must choose a few projects, a few big projects. Not necessarily pipelines, but maybe pipelines, we’ll see.”
Now, if you think that all of this sounds strangely familiar, you’re not crazy. Carney has been doing this dance since he first stepped out from behind the curtain, saying one thing out west and another back east.
Speaking in B.C. in February he aped a Donald Trump line by saying he wanted Canada to “build, baby, build,” and promised to use “the emergency powers of the federal government to accelerate the major projects that we need in order to build this economy and take on the Americans,” clarifying to CBC that those major projects included pipelines. But then, in a French-language interview, he was asked if he planned to force Quebec to accept a pipeline, and he answered, “I would never impose [a pipeline] on Quebec.”
These examples should be enough to demonstrate that Mark Carney is a Con Man. But who, exactly, is his mark? Is he telling the truth in Quebec, where he’s looking to syphon off support from the Bloc Québécois? Or is he telling the truth in Alberta, where he’d love to snatch a few more urban ridings from the Conservatives?
The answer is that, actually, we’re all his mark. Carney doesn’t really care about Quebec’s sovereignty, or any contentious constitutional question like that. And he certainly has no desire to build pipelines and LNG terminals in order to turn Canada into a global energy superpower. A glance at his long career, as both a public and private sector Net-Zero activist, pressuring both individual corporations and national governments to adopt his environmentalist ideology, will tell you as much.
Once you accept that, you start to notice Carney’s sleight-of-hand on questions of energy and affordability. He’s taking credit for “Axing the Carbon Tax,” when in reality he merely zeroed out part of it, while doubling down on the other half. He’s set it up so that he can bring the Consumer Carbon Tax back whenever he likes, without a vote. Meanwhile, our economy will be slowly strangled by the Industrial Carbon Tax, and our everyday lives will get more expensive as businesses pass the cost down to us.
He remains committed to Bill C-69, the “No More Pipelines Act,” which the Supreme Court said overstepped the federal government’s constitutional authority, which itself shows that his mealy-mouthed talking points on pipelines and energy infrastructure don’t amount to a real commitment to anything. And he still supports the Trudeau government’s emissions caps, which target our Natural Resource Sector, the beating heart of Canada’s economy.
And of course he does, because long ago Mark Carney pledged allegiance to the destructive Net-Zero ideology, and it is that, more than anything else, which is the groundwork for how he will actually govern.
So, whatever you do, don’t buy the con. Mark Carney has spent an entire career, before the start of this campaign, telling us exactly who he is. Don’t let him pull the wool over your eyes now.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Support Dan’s Work to Keep Canadian Energy Affordable!
Canadians for Affordable Energy is run by Dan McTeague, former MP and founder of Gas Wizard. We stand up and fight for more affordable energy.
2025 Federal Election
I don’t believe these polls!

Dan McTeague
Cards on the table, I’m skeptical of the current state of the polling in this election. My sense is that Mark Carney and the Liberals’ numbers are, at least in part, a byproduct of sympathetic pollsters over-sampling their key demographics, and those being trumpeted to high heaven by the publicly-funded media. That, coupled with voters’ justifiable annoyance at Donald Trump’s “51st State” cracks and tariff threats, has contributed to an illusion of enthusiasm, a sense that they are running away with this thing.
That said, one polling data point has struck me as being both real and important. A recent Abacus Data poll showed that, when you cut out all the distractions, Canadians’ biggest concern remains our inflated cost of living. And that is an issue which clearly favors Poilievre and the Conservatives.
That’s because the dire state of our economy can largely be laid at the feet of the Liberals, who’ve been running the show for the past decade. Yes, they’ve made a change at the top, but not much of one. On top of being a globe-trotting member of the “Green” Elite, and champion of environmentalist banking, Mark Carney was a Liberal advisor for years, a key part of the Trudeau “brain trust” — trust me, I use that term loosely — that cooked up a whole raft of economy smothering “Green” policies which have done nothing to reduce global carbon emissions, but have succeeded in lightening our wallets.
Under Trudeau, our annual GDP growth noticeably shifted from the 3% range towards the end of the Harper years to the 1% range more recently. Household debt-to-income ratios rose steadily in the same period, while real household spending per capita dropped 2-3% below 2019 levels by 2024, as costs and interest rates went up. Disposable income growth has been outpaced by inflation and taxes, and bankruptcy filings have risen 40% since just 2019.
Canadian food prices have exploded by 35-40%, with family spending up over 50% over the past decade. Consequently, food insecurity rose to 23% by 2023, from around 8% in 2015, and Food Banks Canada has reported a 78% surge in usage from 2019 to 2023.
Meanwhile, Canada’s national debt, which was just over $600 billion when Justin Trudeau was handed the federal credit card, has roughly doubled, reaching over $1.2 trillion by the time he left. And provincial debt has risen by about $1 trillion in the same period.
It’s a frightening financial snapshot. And many of these negatives can be attributed to the Liberals’ war on oil and gas, which remains — however much Carney might wish otherwise — the backbone of our national economy.
So much of the Liberals’ time and effort in government has been spent kneecapping the resource sector, and for purely ideological reasons. From Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act of 2019, which significantly reduces our ability to sell oil and gas abroad, to Bill C-69, which added mountains of red tape for infrastructure projects, so much so that it was nicknamed the “No More Pipelines” Act.
You’ll remember that the Supreme Court ruled the “No More Pipelines” act largely unconstitutional two years ago. Even so, Carney recently said he has no intention of repealing it, prompting Poilievre to tweet out, “This Liberal law blocked BILLIONS of dollars of investment in oil & gas projects, pipelines, LNG plants, mines, and so much more,” with an excellent infographic attached, listing the various cancelled energy projects throughout Canada since the Liberals came to power.
And then of course, there’s the Consumer Carbon Tax, which started out at $20 per tonne of CO2 emitted in 2019, small enough that many Canadians barely noticed they were paying it, but increased every year until it hit $80 per tonne.
By that point it became so noticeable and unpopular that the Liberals felt they had no choice but to “cancel” it (“zero it out” is more accurate), before it could reach the $170 by 2030 which they’d planned. Still, it remains on the books, ready to be raised again, without a vote, if Carney so chooses.
Even if he doesn’t, Carney has doubled down on the Industrial Carbon Tax. While the Liberals claim this is an improvement because it isn’t paid by working Canadians, only by big evil “polluters.” Of course, they said something similar about the Consumer Tax, that by some financial wizardry, we regular folks would get back more than we paid in, which turned out to be total bunk.
Meanwhile, the Industrial Tax makes our lives more expensive in essentially the same way as the Consumer Tax. It raises the cost of doing business, of heating our homes, of filling up our car, of our grocery bills. It just does so by a less direct route, by taxing businesses instead of individuals, so that we pay when the price of goods and services goes up in response.
The Industrial Carbon Tax, much like Trudeau’s Clean Fuel Regulations, is ultimately a hidden tax, and that suits Carney just fine. He’d prefer that we not know who to blame as our cost of living skyrockets.
The Liberal Party’s economic record over since 2015 has been atrocious, and it will be no different under Mark Carney. He is complicit, and he continues to support policies which would make us poorer, like Bill S-243, the “Climate-Aligned Finance Act,” which Carney testified before the Senate in support of last year. That bill sought to make it nearly impossible for banks to invest in, or loan money to, oil and gas projects in Canada, and tried to force financial institutions to appoint board members ideologically opposed to fossil fuels.
Canada needs to change course, and soon. As things stand, it will be tough for even a good captain to navigate us through the rough seas the Liberals have steered us into over the past ten years. A few more, and with Mark Carney at the helm, might make that impossible.
Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.
Support Dan’s Work to Keep Canadian Energy Affordable!
Canadians for Affordable Energy is run by Dan McTeague, former MP and founder of Gas Wizard. We stand up and fight for more affordable energy.
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