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Dan McTeague

Mark Carney would be bad for Canada

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By Dan McTeague

 

Carney is a champion of ESG, and the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) which seeks to harness the might of global finance to bring about a Net-Zero global economy

Whether Carney will actually throw his hat in the ring is hard to predict. He did announce that he will “be considering this decision closely with my family over the coming few days.” But his years-long  flirtation with electoral politics suggests that Carney is politically ambitious. And in the tradition of the politically ambitious, he’s lining up his constituents. At this very moment he’s busy making calls, and promises, to Liberal MPs looking for their support. Over the next several days we will hear an unending stream of praise for Carney, that he’s a ‘breath of fresh air,’ that he’s ‘just what Canada needs,’ and on and on.

Well don’t you believe it. Because one thing is for certain — Canada does not need another uber-elite, WEF hobnobbing, Green Agenda-pushing leader at the helm of any political party.

Let’s not forget who Carney is.

The former Governor of the Banks of Canada and England, Carney currently runs the megafirm Brookfield, whose offices he recently moved from Canada to the U.S., and serves as the UN Special Envoy for Climate Leadership and Finance.

Rich, established, and part of the green elite: that is Mark Carney.

warned about Carney during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when he — along with climate activist and Trudeau-whisperer Gerald Butts — was pushing hard for what he called a ‘green recovery.’ At the time Carney was framing the economic and health crisis as an opportunity to ‘leapfrog’ into a new economy. Four years later and we have all experienced first hand the real meaning of this utopian green vision — soaring energy costs which have made it harder to heat our homes, gas up our cars and buy groceries.

Conservatives call him “Carbon Tax Carney,” a nickname which his apologists have started to say is unfair, since after years of championing the Carbon Tax, he has recently distanced himself from it.

Well, of course he has! Support for the Carbon Tax has cratered across the country, and Carney is just one of many long-time supporters jumping ship in the hope that their reputation — and their wider agenda — doesn’t get sucked down with it.

Carney has been, and continues to be, a carnival barker for interventionist policies and regulation to control carbon emissions. When it comes to action on the environment and the economy Carney is of the “just do what we smart people say” school. He constantly talks of an impending climate crisis, and supports his alarmist fellow travellers like climate doomster Greta Thunberg, whom he has praised for her “many positive contributions.”

Carney has persistently advocated for strict controls on corporate governance to direct support — that is, money — towards his favored fuels and technologies. In fact, his apparent “about face” on the Carbon Tax (he said it “served a purpose up until now”) came about in the context of his Senate testimony in favor of Bill S-243, the “Climate-Aligned Finance Act,” which seeks to make it nearly impossible for banks to invest in, or loan money to, oil and gas projects in Canada, and tries to force financial institutions to appoint board members ideologically opposed to hydrocarbon energy.

Carney is a champion of ESG, and the founder and co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ,) which seeks to harness the might of global finance to bring about a Net-Zero global economy. After a lot of initial excitement and acclaim (at least from the Davos-brigade), GFANZ has had trouble coping with the difficult economic times which Carney’s preferred policies have contributed to bringing about, not to mention the potential for antitrust litigation from the U.S. Department of Justice, which seems increasingly likely. Some of the group’s biggest members — Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo — have dropped out of the alliance just in the past month.

That might mean that GFANZ is not long for this world, but even so it should remain as a black mark on Carney’s résumé. It demonstrates that his economic instincts, whichsome are praising, are always towards more control, by the likes of him, over how the rest of us live our lives. And its downfall likely foreshadows what a Prime Minister Carney would do to Canada’s economy.

On energy and the environment, Carney is Trudeau with Wall Street and central bank experience: a green ideologue, but a more sophisticated one.

Canadians are fed up with green ideologues, polished or otherwise. Their ideas undermine our economic well-being, by making energy a lot more expensive. Ultimately, a Liberal Party under Mark Carney’s leadership would represent more of the same green grifting policies we saw under Justin Trudeau.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions. Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.

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Dan McTeague

In 2025, we have much to look forward to so let’s celebrate now

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By Dan McTeague

 

That light at the end of the tunnel we thought was an oncoming train? It might be the sun after all!

“Tis the season to be jolly,” says the song, and commonsense-loving Canadians would do well to follow that dictum this Christmas season.

To be sure, Justin Trudeau’s nine years in power have harmed our country and its people immeasurably. Trudeau has waged a multi-front war on both the production and consumption of hydrocarbon energy, the backbone of the Canadian economy.

The Trudeau government, devoted as it is to the damaging Net Zero ideology, instituted a Carbon Tax, appropriately set to increase every year on April Fool’s Day, of all days, so that Canadians would get progressively acclimated to paying more for energy every year. Like frogs in a slowly heating pot.

He was so devoted to this increase that he refused to postpone it during the dark early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when no one knew what was going on, unemployment was rising sharply, and the country was looking at a severe economic downturn. That’s ideology for you.

The Carbon Tax, compounded as it is by the less-known Clean Fuel Standard, which I’ve dubbed the Second Carbon Tax, has been an albatross around the neck of the Canadian economy, making it difficult for us to keep our heads above water. It has made it increasingly more expensive to heat our homes in a famously frigid climate, and to gas up our cars in a huge country where driving is a necessity.

Those are its obvious consequences, but somewhat less commented on has been its secondary effects on the price of goods and services. The Carbon Tax raises the cost of business at every step of our supply chain, from the farm to the grocery store, and that cost is ultimately passed onto the consumer.

And then there are the Electric Vehicle (EV) mandates, which will become an issue much sooner than you realize. The Trudeau government has mandated that by 2035, in just about a decade, every new car, SUV, or light truck sold in Canada must be an EV. This despite the fact that EVs are less reliable — once again, especially in the cold.

Charging EVs is extremely inconvenient, generally taking hours. And that’s if you can even find a charger — Natural Resources Canada estimates that we will need to build about 450,000 charging stations to meet the needs of the country, if Trudeau’s EV transition is going to work at all. Right now we have about 28,000.

They’re also expensive to produce, which is why the Trudeau government (along with their partners in crime, the Ford government in Ontario) have been heavily subsidizing their production. And they’re expensive to buy, which is why the government has been subsidizing their purchase. Which is to say, billions of taxpayer dollars are being shoveled into both ends of the EV dumpster fire!

And one of the most recent outrages perpetrated by this government has been the emission cap, which as I said in these pages a few months ago, “make Canada the only country in the world which willingly and purposefully stifles its single largest revenue stream.”

After all, a report commissioned by the Government of Alberta found that an Emissions Cap would lead to a 10% decrease in Alberta’s oil production and a 16% decrease in conventional natural gas production. The report estimates that “over the 2030 to 2040 period… real GDP in Alberta is $191 billion lower and real GDP in the Rest of Canada is $91 billion lower, compared to the baseline scenario.” Instead of growing, the economies of Alberta and Canada will have contracted by 2040, by 4.5% of GDP for the former and by 1.0% of GDP of the latter.

And if that is too abstract, it just means that working men and women, throughout our country, not just in our western provinces, will struggle to provide for their families, whether or not their professions have anything to do with oil and gas. That’s what a shrinking economy looks like.

Now, I could go on and on this way, touching on housing, crime, or rising unemployment, but a truly exhaustive list of Trudeaupian blunders might take us all the way to Easter. But I did open this article by counseling us all to rejoice, in the proper spirit of this season. And, despite this bleak picture, there is good reason to do so.

First off, rejoice because the results of Trudeau’s catastrophic governance have been noticed. Regular people have soured on his policies, particularly the supposedly “green” ones. Hammering away at the Carbon Tax has put Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives in a pretty good position to win the federal election we’re set to have on or before (preferably before) October 20, 2025. At which point we can begin the process of doing a significant course correction and putting the past 9 years behind us.

That is easier said than done. It will take a lot of hard work on the part of the Conservatives to undo the ideological policies which have made our lives unaffordable, and there will be the temptation to go after the low hanging fruit by, say, canceling the Carbon Tax and leaving the rest of the rotten Net Zero superstructure in place.

That would be bad, and if they try anything along those lines, I will be the first to call them on it. Even so, they are unlikely to actively make things worse, which makes them better than the Trudeau Liberals.

But more importantly, we should rejoice because politics isn’t everything. That’s easy to forget when we’re throwing elbows on Twitter/X and elsewhere, but there’s more to life than this. With all of our problems, we’re still blessed to live in a beautiful, peaceful country with abundant natural resources and full of good people.

So my advice to you, dear reader, is to make it a point during these holidays to spend some time with family and catch up with some old friends, whatever their political persuasion.

You won’t regret it.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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Ford and Trudeau are playing checkers. Trump and Smith are playing chess

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By Dan McTeague

 

Ford’s calls for national unity – “We need to stand united as Canadians!” – in context feels like an endorsement of fellow Electric Vehicle fanatic Trudeau. And you do wonder if that issue has something to do with it. After all, the two have worked together to pump billions in taxpayer dollars into the EV industry.

There’s no doubt about it: Donald Trump’s threat of a blanket 25% tariff on Canadian goods (to be established if the Canadian government fails to take sufficient action to combat drug trafficking and illegal crossings over our southern border) would be catastrophic for our nation’s economy. More than $3 billion in goods move between the U.S. and Canada on a daily basis. If enacted, the Trump tariff would likely result in a full-blown recession.

It falls upon Canada’s leaders to prevent that from happening. That’s why Justin Trudeau flew to Florida two weeks ago to point out to the president-elect that the trade relationship between our countries is mutually beneficial.

This is true, but Trudeau isn’t the best person to make that case to Trump, since he has been trashing the once and future president, and his supporters, both in public and private, for years. He did so again at an appearance just the other day, in which he implied that American voters were sexist for once again failing to elect the nation’s first female president, and said that Trump’s election amounted to an assault on women’s rights.

Consequently, the meeting with Trump didn’t go well.

But Trudeau isn’t Canada’s only politician, and in recent days we’ve seen some contrasting approaches to this serious matter from our provincial leaders.

First up was Doug Ford, who followed up a phone call with Trudeau earlier this week by saying that Canadians have to prepare for a trade war. “Folks, this is coming, it’s not ‘if,’ it is — it’s coming… and we need to be prepared.”

Ford said that he’s working with Liberal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to put together a retaliatory tariff list. Spokesmen for his government floated the idea of banning the LCBO from buying American alcohol, and restricting the export of critical minerals needed for electric vehicle batteries (I’m sure Trump is terrified about that last one).

But Ford’s most dramatic threat was his announcement that Ontario is prepared to shut down energy exports to the U.S., specifically to Michigan, New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, if Trump follows through with his plan. “We’re sending a message to the U.S. You come and attack Ontario, you attack the livelihoods of Ontario and Canadians, we’re going to use every tool in our toolbox to defend Ontarians and Canadians across the border,” Ford said.

Now, unfortunately, all of this chest-thumping rings hollow. Ontario does almost $500 billion per year in trade with the U.S., and the province’s supply chains are highly integrated with America’s. The idea of just cutting off the power, as if you could just flip a switch, is actually impossible. It’s a bluff, and Trump has already called him on it. When told about Ford’s threat by a reporter this week, Trump replied “That’s okay if he does that. That’s fine.”

And Ford’s calls for national unity – “We need to stand united as Canadians!” – in context feels like an endorsement of fellow Electric Vehicle fanatic Trudeau. And you do wonder if that issue has something to do with it. After all, the two have worked together to pump billions in taxpayer dollars into the EV industry. Just over the past year Ford and Trudeau have been seen side by side announcing their $5 billion commitment to Honda, or their $28.2 billion in subsidies for new Stellantis and Volkswagen electric vehicle battery plants.

Their assumption was that the U.S. would be a major market for Canadian EVs. Remember that “vehicles are the second largest Canadian export by value, at $51 billion in 2023 of which 93% was exported to the U.S.,”according to the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers Association, and “Auto is Ontario’s top export at 28.9% of all exports (2023).”

But Trump ran on abolishing the Biden administration’s de facto EV mandate. Now that he’s back in the White House, the market for those EVs that Trudeau and Ford invested in so heavily is going to be much softer. Perhaps they’d like to be able to blame Trump’s tariffs for the coming downturn rather than their own misjudgment.

In any event, Ford’s tactic stands in stark contrast to the response from Alberta, Canada’s true energy superpower. Premier Danielle Smith made it clear that her province “will not support cutting off our Alberta energy exports to the U.S., nor will we support a tariff war with our largest trading partner and closest ally.”

Smith spoke about this topic at length at an event announcing a new $29-million border patrol team charged with combatting drug trafficking, at which said that Trudeau’s criticisms of the president-elect were, “not helpful.” Her deputy premier Mike Ellis was quoted as saying, “The concerns that president-elect Trump has expressed regarding fentanyl are, quite frankly, the same concerns that I and the premier have had.” Smith and Ellis also criticized Ottawa’s progressively lenient approach to drug crimes.

(For what it’s worth, a recent Léger poll found that “Just 29 per cent of [Canadians] believe Trump’s concerns about illegal immigration and drug trafficking from Canada to the U.S. are unwarranted.” Perhaps that’s why some recent polls have found that Trudeau is currently less popular in Canada than Trump at the moment.)

Smith said that Trudeau’s criticisms of the president-elect were, “not helpful.” And on X/Twitter she said, “Now is the time to… reach out to our friends and allies in the U.S. to remind them just how much Americans and Canadians mutually benefit from our trade relationship – and what we can do to grow that partnership further,” adding, “Tariffs just hurt Americans and Canadians on both sides of the border. Let’s make sure they don’t happen.”

This is exactly the right approach. Smith knows there is a lot at stake in this fight, and is not willing to step into the ring in a fight that Canada simply can’t win, and will cause a great deal of hardship for all involved along the way.

While Trudeau indulges in virtue signaling and Ford in sabre rattling, Danielle Smith is engaging in true statesmanship. That’s something that is in short supply in our country these days.

As I’ve written before, Trump is playing chess while Justin Trudeau and Doug Ford are playing checkers. They should take note of Smith’s strategy. Honey will attract more than vinegar, and if the long history of our two countries tell us anything, it’s that diplomacy is more effective than idle threats.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

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