Economy
Kamala Harris’ Energy Policy Catalog Is Full Of Whoppers
![](https://www.todayville.com/edmonton/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/07/tvrd-dc-kamala-harris-image-2024-07-25.jpeg)
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The catalog of Vice President Kamala Harris’s history on energy policy is as thin as the listing of her accomplishments as President Joe Biden’s “Border Czar,” which is to say it is bereft of anything of real substance.
But the queen of word salads and newly minted presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has publicly endorsed many of her party’s most radical and disastrous energy-related ideas while serving in various elected offices — both in her energy basket-case home state of California and in Washington, D.C.
What Harris’s statements add up to is a potential disaster for America’s future energy security.
“The vice president’s approach to energy has been sophomorically dilettantish, grasping not only at shiny things such as AOC’s Green New Deal but also at the straws Americans use to suck down the drinks they need when she starts talking like a Valley Girl,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at Institute for Energy Research, told me in an email this week. “To be honest, she’s no worse than many of her former Senate colleagues who have helped cheer on rising energy costs and the fleeing American jobs that accompany them. She doesn’t seem to understand the importance of reliable and affordable domestic energy, good skilled jobs or the national security implications of domestically produced energy, but maybe she will go back to school on the matter. No doubt on her electric school bus.”
During her first run for the Senate in 2016, Harris said she would love to expand her state’s economically ruinous cap-and-trade program to the national level. She also endorsed then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s harebrained scheme to ban plastic straws as a means of fighting climate change.
Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told me proposals like that one would lead during a Harris presidency to the “Californication of the entire U.S. energy policy.” “Historically,” he added, “the transition of power from a president to a vice president is designed to signal continuity. This won’t be the case, because a Harris administration will be much worse.”
But how much worse could it be than the set of Biden policies that Harris has roundly endorsed over the last three and a half years? How much worse can it be than having laughed through a presidency that:
— Cancelled the $12 billion Keystone XL Pipeline on day one.
— Enacted what many estimate to be over $1 trillion in debt-funded, inflation-creating green energy subsidies.
— Refused to comply with laws requiring the holding of timely federal oil and gas lease sales.
— Instructed its agencies to slow-play permitting for all manner of oil and gas-related infrastructure.
— Tried to ban stoves and other gas appliances.
— Listed the Dunes Sagebrush Lizard as an endangered species despite its protection via a highly-successful conservation program.
— Invoked a “pause” on permitting of new LNG export infrastructure for the most specious reasons imaginable.
— Drained the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for purely political reasons.
As Biden’s successor for the nomination, Harris becomes the proud owner of all these policies, and more.
But Harris’ history shows it could indeed get worse. Much worse, in fact.
While mounting her own disastrous campaign for her party’s presidential nomination in 2020, Harris endorsed a complete ban on hydraulic fracturing, i.e., fracking. She later conformed that position to Biden’s own, slightly less insane view, but only after being picked as his running mate.
Consider also that while serving in the Senate in early 2019, Harris chose to sign up as a co-sponsor of the ultra-radical Green New Deal proposed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. It is not enough that the Biden regulators appeared to be using that nutty proposal and climate alarmism as the impetus to transform America’s entire economy and social structure: Harris favors enacting the whole thing.
As I have detailed here many times, every element of climate-alarm-based energy policies adopted by the Biden administration will inevitably lead the United State to become increasingly reliant on China for its energy needs, in the process decimating our country’s energy security. By her own words and actions, Harris has made it abundantly clear she wants to shift the process of getting there into a higher gear.
She is an energy disaster-in-waiting.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Economy
Historic decline in Canadian living standards officially reaches five-year mark
![](https://www.todayville.com/edmonton/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/04/tvrd-fi-people-taxpayers-canadians-image-2024-04-12.jpg)
From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
Indeed, according to a recent study, from the middle of 2019 to the end of 2023, GDP per person fell from $59,905 to $58,134—a 3.0 per cent drop over four and a half years.
On Friday, Statistics Canada released its estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter of 2024, which confirmed that despite growth in the overall economy, individual living standards for Canadians declined once again. As a result, the ongoing decline in Canadian living standards has officially reached the five-year mark.
GDP—the final value of all goods and services produced in the economy and the most widely used measure of overall economic activity—grew by 0.5 per cent from April to June of 2024 (after adjusting for inflation). But while the economy continues to grow in the aggregate, inflation-adjusted GDP per person—a broad measure of individual living standards that adjusts for population—actually fell by 0.1 per cent during the second quarter of 2024, down to $58,005.
In other words, while the overall economy is growing, individual living standards are falling. This apparent disconnect is due to Canada’s growing population, and the fact that the rate of economic growth is not fast enough to account for the amount the population has increased. Specifically, while the economy grew by 0.5 per cent from April to June of 2024, the total population grew by 0.6 per cent (or 242,673 people).
These data confirm that Canadians are still suffering a historic decline in living standards.
Indeed, according to a recent study, from the middle of 2019 to the end of 2023, GDP per person fell from $59,905 to $58,134—a 3.0 per cent drop over four and a half years. This was the second-longest and third-deepest decline in living standards since 1985, and was only exceeded in both respects by a decline that lasted more than five years (from June 1989 to September 1994).
Unfortunately for Canadians, this recent decline in living standards persisted through the first three months of 2024, and now the newest data show the decline has continued into the second quarter of 2024. Therefore, as of June 2024, inflation-adjusted GDP per person stood 3.2 per cent below the level it was in the middle of 2019. Again, despite a few brief quarters of positive per-person economic growth since 2019, the general decline in inflation-adjusted GDP has officially reached the five-year mark.
Due to the continued persistence of weak economic growth combined with remarkable population increases, Canadians have suffered a marked and prolonged decrease in living standards over the last five years. This puts Canada just six months away from experiencing the longest decline in individual living standards of the last 40 years—a milestone no one should be eager to reach.
Authors:
Economy
British Columbia’s finances go from bad to worse during Eby’s first full year
![](https://www.todayville.com/edmonton/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2024/08/tvrd-fi-bc-premier-david-eby-image-2024-08-30.jpg)
From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill and Grady Munro
You might be able to justify higher spending if it improved programs and services for British Columbians—but it hasn’t. In fact, despite substantial increases in spending in recent years, the province’s health-care wait times have increased and student test scores have declined.
The recent move by BC United to suspend its campaign, essentially clearing the way for a two-party race in this fall’s provincial election, made headlines across British Columbia. But another recent event, which failed to garner much media attention, included some jaw-dropping numbers that will impact provincial finances for years to come.
Last week, the Eby government recently released its year-end report for the 2023/24 fiscal year—this government’s first full year in office. Unfortunately for British Columbians, provincial finances went from bad to worse as the government ran a larger-than-projected budget deficit and accumulated significant debt.
First, let’s take a closer look at the government’s budget—David Eby’s first official budget as premier—which projected a $4.2 billion operating deficit for the 2023/24 fiscal year (the government expected to spend $81.2 billion while only bringing in $77.7 billion in total revenues). For context, in its last budget the Horgan government had also planned to run a $4.2 billion deficit in 2023/24, but expected to take in $7.5 billion less in revenues. Put differently, the Eby government could have ran a budget surplus if it stuck to Horgan’s spending plan. Instead, the Eby government chose to spend away that $7.5 billion.
Given that per-person (inflation-adjusted) program spending was already at its highest level since 1965 (the earliest year of available data) under the Horgan government in 2021 (even excluding COVID-related spending), that’s a massive influx of new spending.
Now, the year-end report shows that the Eby government increased spending even further—$3.5 billion more than its original plan in the 2023 budget. Overall, it ran a $5.0 billion operating deficit in 2023/24, despite once again taking in more revenues ($1.9 billion) than it had originally planned. Again, the government chose to spend away every single dollar of extra revenue, and then some.
And the eye-popping deficit is only part of the picture as longer-term spending on things such as schools, highways and bridges, isn’t included. After accounting for long-term spending on capital projects, the B.C. government accumulated $11.3 billion in net debt (total debt minus financial assets) in a single year from 2022/23 to 2023/24. Government debt must ultimately be financed by taxpayers who spent $3.3 billion in debt interest payments in 2023/24. That’s money no longer available for programs such as health care or education.
According to the Eby government, “with a slower world economy and a growing population, we cannot afford to have a deficit of services. When we provide the services and support people need to have a good life, it makes our economy stronger and more resilient.”
You might be able to justify higher spending if it improved programs and services for British Columbians—but it hasn’t. In fact, despite substantial increases in spending in recent years, the province’s health-care wait times have increased and student test scores have declined. Put differently, according to key indicators, B.C.’s performance on health care and education—the two largest areas of government spending—have worsened despite higher spending.
Higher spending also hasn’t paid off for the B.C. economy, which is stagnating. The province’s per-person GDP, a broad measure of living standards, is expected to be lower this year than in 2018. And the Eby government expects negative growth in per-person GDP this fiscal year.
Unfortunately for British Columbians, the latest year-end report on B.C.’s finances shows the Eby government took a bad fiscal situation and made it worse with higher spending and an even larger budget deficit. The next government, whoever that may be, must deal will this fiscal mess.
Authors:
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