Indecent Proposals: How Activist Investors Hijacked Responsible Corporate Governance

It’s a central tenet of the free-market economy: a corporation’s job is to maximize investment returns to its shareholders. Bluntly, to make money. And “shareholder proposals” have been a powerful tool enabling investors to pressure a company’s board to take a particular action to increase its value. In recent years, however, activist groups have been weaponizing shareholder proposals to pressure companies into pursuing ideological goals, especially environmental and “progressive” social-welfare causes. In the case of the oil and natural gas industry, they’ve even pushed for companies to take actions that would drive them out of business. Veteran markets expert Gina Pappano examines this damaging phenomenon – and the new movement pushing back.

No matter what business they engage in, the purpose of all corporations – their raison d’être – is to generate returns on their shareholders’ investment and to maximize shareholder value by achieving a rising price in the stock market, paying dividends to shareholders, and eventually perhaps engineering a profitable “exit” from the market by being taken over at a premium. This understanding is known as “shareholder primacy” and it is so central to good corporate governance that companies and regulators have developed a mechanism, the shareholder proposal, whereby anyone who holds stock in a corporation can petition its board of directors to examine some practice or other with an eye towards improving the company and its value.

But in the 21^st century – especially in the last decade or so – activist groups have repurposed shareholder proposals into weapons used to pressure companies to adopt policies informed by the group’s ideological concerns. No sector in Canada has been targeted by ideologically driven agendas more than the oil and natural gas industry, a crucial branch of Canada’s economy that includes hundreds of producers, pipeline companies, refinery operators and service companies, many of which are publicly traded. Using shareholder proposals whose goal is the limitation and eventual elimination of Canada’s oil and natural gas production, activists who are shareholders-of-convenience are attempting to villainize one of the most productive, vital and longstanding pillars of our country’s economy.

Popular delusions: Climate activists push for an end to the oil and natural gas industry even as an energy-hungry world set records last year for energy consumption and oil production; the world will need crude oil and natural gas for decades to come and Canada could be a preferred supplier. (Sources: (photo) Rainforest Action Network, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0; (chart) Energy Institute)

Stand.earth, Investors for Paris Compliance, the BC General Employees’ Union, Environmental Defence Canada, the Shareholder Association for Research and Education and MÉDAC are just a few of the activist groups that over the past few years have presented anti-fossil-fuel shareholder proposals to Canada’s “Big Five” banks and to oil and natural gas companies. Last year, for example, Stand.earth demanded that the Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) “Board of Directors adopt a policy for a time-bound phase-out of the RBC’s lending and underwriting to projects and companies engaging in new fossil fuel exploration, development and transportation.” In other words, they were asking Canada’s biggest bank to stop supporting an industry that provides hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs, pays tens of billions of dollars in taxes annually and forms the economic backbone of three Canadian provinces.

The demands of these groups are premised on convincing shareholders that eliminating one of our country’s most productive sectors will benefit Canada socially and environmentally and reduce global CO₂emissions, when the facts demonstrate that nothing Canada could do domestically could influence emissions on a global scale. The most recent Statistical Review of World Energy, for example, described 2023 as a “year of record highs in an energy hungry world”.

The world will continue to need crude oil and natural gas for decades to come – not only the energy these fuels provide, but the thousands of crucial products that are made from them. Canadian oil and natural gas companies, with their high environmental and safety standards and technical expertise, should be among the preferred suppliers of the energy that powers the world. Yet the activists driving these economically ruinous crusades, based on dogma and ideology, want shareholders, investors and Canadians at large to vote in favour of their proposals. How did we get here?

The Annual General Meeting as Town Hall Meeting

Annual general meetings (AGM) used to be mostly stodgy affairs, dedicated to discussing a company’s financial statements and general business; the rise of shareholders’ proposals has made some of them much more contentious. Depicted, (top) Ford’s AGM, 1980; (middle) Bank of America’s AGM, 2024; (bottom) an activist is removed from Shell’s 2023 AGM. (Sources of photos: (top) Ford Motor Company; (middle) Rainforest Action Network, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0; (bottom) Sky News)

Historically, the annual general meeting (AGM) of a corporation (whether privately held or publicly traded) was called to present and discuss the previous year’s results as embodied in the audited annual financial statements, to elect any new directors that might be required, to announce the retirement of existing directors if applicable, to announce any major changes to the company’s executive team, and to discuss any other relevant business as the company’s leadership might deem necessary. These were often stodgy and boring events, especially if things were ticking along smoothly. And these are still the core matters to which the majority of AGMs are devoted among Canada’s approximately 3,500 publicly traded companies as well as the vastly more numerous privately held companies.

But since the Second World War, and especially over the past 30 or so years, AGMs have become more – much more. In the United States’, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Shareholder Proposal Rule (Rule 14-a8) came into force in 1942. In testifying before Congress on the then-new rule in 1943, SEC Commissioner Robert H. O’Brien explained that its motivation was to “approximate the widely attended town hall meeting type of forum characteristic of the days when nearly all corporations were closely held and geographically limited.”

The Town Hall analogy is a good one. In a 2022 speech entitled The Shareholder Proposal Rule: A Cornerstone of Corporate Democracy, former SEC Director Renee Jones laid out the role and the rights of the shareholder. “Shareholders, that is individuals or institutions that invest in a corporation, are purchasing a share of the company with the understanding that the board of directors and senior management team will use their investment wisely, making sound corporate decisions with the intent of increasing profits, to which [the shareholders] are entitled to a share. They are also entitled to certain governance rights including the right to elect directors, approve major corporate transactions and express their views on corporate governance matters and other fundamental issues related to the corporation’s business. Additionally, shareholders generally have the right to bring matters before other shareholders for a vote at a shareholder or ‘town hall’ meeting.”

In 1969 a group called the Medical Committee for Human Rights filed a shareholder proposal asking Dow Chemical Corporation to stop manufacturing napalm, an explosive chemical used with at-times horrifying effects in the Vietnam War.

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The bulk of the foregoing paragraph is a good synopsis of a shareholder’s rights and roles as it has been understood for the past 200-300 years. But Jones packed a lot into the sentence following the word “Additionally”. What she mentioned has in fact happened – with a vengeance. Since the enactment of the U.S. Shareholder Proposal Rule and the U.S.-inspired Canada Business Corporations Act’s Shareholder Proposal Regime, the number of shareholder proposals being presented every year in each country has increased exponentially.

The mechanism allows for any shareholder to present a proposal to a corporation provided the shareholder meets certain technical requirements set out by the SEC or the Canada Business Corporations Act, as the case may be. The proposal is printed in the set of corporate documents sent to all stockholders prior to any AGM. At the AGM, the shareholder presents the proposal and there is a vote.

In the early years, most shareholder proposals concerned matters of corporate governance. It was not until the 1960s and 70s that the phenomenon took off, possibly reflecting the era’s increased social activism. For example, in 1969 a group called the Medical Committee for Human Rights filed a shareholder proposal asking Dow Chemical Corporation to stop manufacturing napalm, an explosive chemical used with at-times horrifying effects in the Vietnam War. In the 1970s and 1980s, the anti-Apartheid movement used the shareholder proposal process to pressure corporations to terminate their business dealings in South Africa.

Renee Jones, a former director of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, defended the right of shareholders to bring matters to a vote at AGMs; many such proposals have focussed on left-leaning environmental, social and governance (ESG) topics, and companies have been anxious to play along. At right, a screenshot from the presentation entitled “Unlocking the Power of Environmental, Social and Governance Data” by the World Economic Forum. (Source of right photo: World Economic Forum, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Most such proposals did not tend to get very far, however; Boards of Directors typically recommended voting against them, and that tended to be the end of it. Most shareholders in publicly traded companies do not delve very deeply into the affairs of the often-numerous companies in which they might hold a position. A small business owner who is saving for retirement, for example, might well hold shares in several dozen companies via their RRSP portfolio; what they or their investment adviser monitor above all is whether dividends are being paid and share prices are doing well.

Accordingly, most shareholders take their cue from the Board of Directors and vote according to their recommendation, via so-called “proxy” forms, which also cover votes on standard matters like approving the financial statements and electing new directors. In this vein, proxy advisory firms have arisen, which institutional investors and large public pension funds rely upon to guide their voting. This is why it is very difficult to vote against a board and why most shareholder proposals fail at the AGM ballot.

Still, the number of shareholder proposals has grown dramatically and this increase has coincided with a rise in ideologically driven proposals. And none more than those associated with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) movement. In even a cursory investigation into this issue, one is struck by the degree to which shareholder proposals and ESG have become inextricably linked. Many of the current definitions of shareholder proposals one comes across, in fact, claim that they are “an important corporate governance tool which allow[s] shareholders to engage with public companies with respect to environmental, social and corporate governance issues.” Effectively, the shareholder proposal mechanism has been hijacked and harnessed to one dominant purpose.

Shareholders vs. Stakeholders

The evolution away from shareholder primacy to what is known as stakeholder primacy in the purpose and governance of corporations has been closely aligned with the rise of ESG investing. Proponents of so-called “stakeholder capitalism” contend that corporations should care less about superficial concerns like profits for shareholders and instead focus on the good of all their “stakeholders”, by which they mean anyone who is affected by, depends on or makes use of a company: customers, employees, the communities in which a company operates, the environment, governments and society as a whole. Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, is a prominent proponent of stakeholder capitalism, writing a book of that title.

Under the ESG or ‘responsible investing’ vision, society presumably no longer has much need for profitable companies whose earnings help build up the retirement accounts of tens of millions of future pensioners, but has become primarily focused on saving whales, fighting climate change or paying for free social housing.

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The company’s actual investors, who make its work possible, should presumably get some consideration as well, but their good tends to get lost in the idealistic rhetoric which accompanies the ESG approach. The corporation’s original purpose as a profit-maximizing entity dedicated to serving its shareholders’ financial interests becomes subsumed by the deluge of social welfare-oriented activities (“giving back to the community”) and support for environmental causes. It is noteworthy that all of this is heavily skewed towards “progressive”, i.e., left-leaning, causes. In some cases, this has become self-destructive if not borderline suicidal, such as the BP CEO who some years ago infamously stated that the “B” in British Petroleum should be reimagined as “Beyond”.

Advocates of “stakeholder capitalism” believe companies should care less about profit – but it’s the push for those profits that makes companies successful, creates jobs and wealth, and finances retirement for millions. (Source of photo: Scott Beale, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

An important and current statement of ESG principles can be found in the United Nations-supported Principles of Responsible Investing (PRI), which has been signed by over 3,500 asset managers pledging to further “environmental, social, and corporate governance” goals in order to “better align investors with broader objectives of society.” Under this vision, society presumably no longer has much need for profitable companies whose earnings help build up the retirement accounts of tens of millions of future pensioners, but has become primarily focused on saving whales, fighting climate change or paying for free social housing.

It is interesting to note that the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board is one of the PRI’s founding signatories. As a future beneficiary of Canada’s public pension system, I find myself worried by this fact. Like millions of other Canadians, my future wellbeing depends on the continued solvency of the CPP which, in turn, depends on the ongoing profitability of the companies in which it invests. The same can be said about dozens of other pension funds such as those for teachers, nurses and government employees.

The United Nations-supported Principles of Responsible Investing, signed by 3,500 asset managers – including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board – demanded that companies pursue ESG goals to “better align investors with broader objectives of society”; ideological dogma has replaced the pursuit of shareholder value. (Source of photos: (left) expatpostcards/Shutterstock; (right) Sheila Fitzgerald/Shutterstock)

The two most prominent concepts among ESG investing principles and in shareholder proposals meant to push ESG agendas are: (1) diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and (2) “sustainability”. DEI is a highly ideological, neo-Marxist doctrine with which C2C readers are by now amply familiar. Sustainability is a somewhat older term that refers to goals pursued by the environmentalist movement, which currently include “net zero”, so-called decarbonization and the divestment from, reduction or outright banning of fossil fuel production and consumption.

Most shareholder proposals focused on sustainability are sector-specific. Oil and natural gas companies and financial institutions received the largest number in the 2023 AGM season. In Canada, most proposals have been aimed either at pushing oil and natural gas companies to net zero and decarbonization goals or at pressuring the Big Five chartered banks to stop investing in oil and natural gas companies and projects.

In 2022, for instance, Investors for Paris Compliance (I4PC) asked Calgary-based pipeline and utilities giant Enbridge Inc. to “strengthen their net zero commitment such that the commitment is consistent with a science-based, net zero target.” I4PC defines net zero to mean “no new oil and gas fields are required beyond those already approved for development in conjunction with a historic investment surge in clean technologies.” So not only was I4PC demanding that Enbridge officially commit to long-term decline in its business (since all oil and natural gas fields deplete over time, requiring continuous reinvestment in new fields merely to maintain current production), but it was also prescribing a huge (“historic”) amount of investment in so-called “clean” technologies that are outside Enbridge’s core business (wind turbines do not require pipelines).

Oil and natural gas companies and financial institutions have been the primary targets of shareholder proposals in Canada, which typically demand aggressive decarbonization and divestment from the energy sector. Shown at bottom, protesters march at the RBC AGM, Toronto. (Sources: (chart) Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance; (photo) Rainforest Action Network, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Gathering Pushback in the United States

There are glimmerings of an awakening that the wave of activist shareholder proposals and ESG investing is materially impairing investment returns and could prove economically ruinous. Investors are, in effect, being defrauded by companies diverting capital, executive attention and employee talents towards expensive social goals that do not, say, develop new products or generate revenue.

In the U.S., pushback has been gathering from several directions. Warren Buffett, the famous “Sage of Omaha,” has openly expressed skepticism about ESG investing and things like corporate reporting on climate change efforts – although it is a sign of the ideology’s thorough penetration of the investment world that Buffett’s stance would be labelled “unconventional” in a business magazine.

One of the world’s most successful investors, Warren Buffett, has been decidedly lukewarm on ESG, a position one business magazine called “unconventional” – an indication of how thoroughly the ideology has penetrated. (Source of photo: Fortune Live Media, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

More substantively, new asset management firms have been launched by entrepreneurs who concluded that the stakeholder primacy model just does not work. Strive Asset Management was founded in early 2022 explicitly to “live by a strict commitment to shareholder primacy – an unwavering mandate that the purpose of a for-profit corporation is to maximize long-run value to investors.” Its founders are private equity manager Anson Freriks and flamboyant commentator Vivek Ramaswamy, who was a candidate for the most recent Republican Presidential nomination, won by Donald Trump.

Strive believes that companies should do what they do best and not fall prey to other agendas. The fund was started specifically to “solve a problem,” as its website explains: “Large financial institutions, including the biggest asset managers, were using their clients’ money to advance social, cultural, environmental and political agendas in corporate America’s boardrooms. Asset managers and for-profit corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize value, and that duty had been neglected.”

Strive’s pitch clearly resonated with investors, as the firm soon became one of the fastest-growing asset managers in the U.S. And its position appears to be having an effect. The latest edition of Strive’s newsletter, The Fiduciary Focus, includes the following headlines: “The Financial Times Credits Strive for Pushing Companies to Drop ESG-Linked Compensation,” “John Deere Pulling Back on ESG,” and “Wall Street Cools on Sustainable Funds.”

“Asset managers and for-profit corporations have a fiduciary duty to maximize value,” says Vivek Ramaswamy, co-founder of Strive, an asset management firm committed to the primacy of shareholders’ financial interests; the firm’s data on the fall of ESG-focussed fund launches suggests his approach is resonating with investors. (Source of left photo: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

There is also growing concern in the political arena that ESG investment and other socially motivated corporate activities pose a threat both to the financial integrity of public pension funds and a challenge to democratic governance. A number of U.S. states have taken formal steps to confront and counter the ESG investment behemoth. One such measure is the non-profit State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF). According to its website, “SFOF’s mission is to drive fiscally sound public policy, by partnering with key stakeholders, and educating Americans on the role of responsible financial management in a free market economy.”

The organization and its members are firm and vocal defenders of shareholder primacy. Among their activities have been letter-writing campaigns to corporations and fund managers that urge them to scale back political activism and instead focus on the interests of their shareholders. They are putting teeth to their words: according to a recent Torys Report, 18 of the SFOF’s member states have enacted anti-ESG laws, including prohibiting fund managers from considering ESG factors in their investments and state entities from investing with asset managers deemed to be discriminating against or boycotting the fossil fuel industry.

ExxonMobil’s bolder, more confrontational tactic may be pointing the way, because in late June both activist groups not only dropped their proposals but promised not to bring forward similar demands in future; in return, ExxonMobil agreed to have its lawsuit dismissed.

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Some of the SFOF member states have also put their money where their mouths are in pushing to restore shareholder primacy. The organization recently supported the State of Texas Permanent School Fund (a large investment fund with US$53 billion in assets that helps pay for the state’s school system) as it cancelled a US$8.5 billion investment with BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investment funds and a prominent proponent of ESG investing. As SFOF urged, “BlackRock should withdraw from international organizations seeking to orchestrate opposition to fossil fuel investment, abandon ‘decarbonization’ policies that are a form of boycotting fossil fuels, and stop using its proxy voting authority to promote an anti-fossil fuel agenda.”

Pushing back: The U.S. State Financial Officers Foundation has urged corporations and fund managers to put shareholders first; 18 member states have enacted anti-ESG laws, including prohibitions on state entities investing with asset managers deemed to be discriminating against or boycotting the fossil fuel industry. (Source of photo: Center for Media and Democracy)

Further pushback is coming from some of the recipients of activist shareholder proposals. It is perhaps not surprising that ExxonMobil is among the leaders here. The company has long been reviled by environmentalists for its insistence on keeping profitability, technical excellence and energy production central to its business. To some, it is the ugly face of “Big Oil”.

In January, ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit to block a shareholder resolution put forward by the groups Follow This and Arjuna Capital, whose stated objective was to force the company to commit to precipitous cuts in CO₂emissions, including with respect to the downstream effects from the combustion of its products by customers. Exxon argued that such a resolution would force the company to “change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely.” Which is what these “shareholders” intend; Exxon’s lawsuit quotes Arjuna Capital’s contention that “Exxon should shrink” and Follow This’s statement that its goal is “to wind down the company’s business in oil and natural gas.”

As Follow This states on its website: “We buy shares in order to work on our mission to stop climate change.” And, it says, its shareholder proposal aims to make ExxonMobil “stop exploring for more oil and gas.” While this kind of agenda is no longer surprising, ExxonMobil’s response was. Corporations generally try to deal with motivated activists by adopting some version of their favoured policies in the hopes they’ll go away (not that they do). ExxonMobil’s bolder, more confrontational tactic may be pointing the way, because in late June both activist groups not only dropped their proposals but promised not to bring forward similar demands in future; in return, ExxonMobil agreed to have its lawsuit dismissed.

Blazing the trail: ExxonMobil early this year filed a lawsuit to block two activist groups from submitting shareholder proposals demanding that the company stop exploring for oil and natural gas and, thereby, “change the nature of its ordinary business or to go out of business entirely”; in June the activist groups backed down. (Source of photo: ET Auto)

Still more pushback in the U.S. is coming from the small but growing number of advocacy organizations submitting anti-ESG shareholder proposals that call on corporations to refocus themselves on shareholder-centred capitalism. The National Center for Public Policy Research and the National Legal and Policy Center are two such organizations. According to a recent SquareWell Partners report entitled “What Do Shareholders Propose?” these kinds of proposals surged by 64 percent in 2023.

Now What About Canada?

This process is still at a much earlier stage in Canada. Last year the not-for-profit organization I lead, InvestNow, submitted and presented shareholder proposals to three Canadian banks asking for explicit commitments to continue to invest in and finance the Canadian oil and natural gas sector. These were the first proposals of this nature presented to Canadian banks and their shareholders. The overwhelming majority of the vote – 99.5 percent of it – was against InvestNow’s proposal. However, fellow shareholders and even some board members approached me after the meeting and thanked me for standing up to the banks and for advocating on behalf of Canadian oil and natural gas and everyday Canadians.

We were back again doing the same this year, presenting shareholder proposals at the AGMs of all five big chartered banks – BMO, CIBC, Scotiabank, RBC and TD – asking them to commission and issue reports qualifying and quantifying the impacts and costs of their net zero commitments. This time we received one percent support for our proposal, a 100 percent increase over last year.

Although InvestNow’s proposal was rejected by Suncor’s board, our hope is that we planted a seed in the directors’ minds about their duty of care and fiduciary obligations to the company’s shareholders and that they will soon find the courage and conviction to say ‘No’ to the activists and ‘Yes’ to shareholder proposals like ours.

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This year InvestNow also submitted our first shareholder proposal to an energy company. We asked Suncor Energy Inc., one of Canada’s largest oil producers and refiners (with production this year estimated at approximately 800,000 barrels per day), to drop its pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and rededicate the company to its core business of producing and refining crude oil. In our view, Suncor should be producing more oil and getting it out to more customers in Canada and around the world – not contributing to its own demise and that of its industry. And it should do this unapologetically. In the face of growing global demand and concerns over energy security, Suncor should increase Canada’s energy supply, thereby helping to reduce energy costs for Canadians and the world.

In the first actions of their kind in Canada, the not-for-profit group InvestNow – led by the author – submitted several shareholder proposals to Canadian banks, asking them to commit to keep investing in the oil and natural gas sector, and to Suncor Energy Inc., asking it to drop its “net zero” commitment; Suncor, the author points out, has held its overall greenhouse gas emissions virtually flat year-over-year, and should unapologetically keep producing oil. (Sources: (photo) Suncor; (graph) Statista)

Like Exxon, Suncor has received many anti-fossil-fuel shareholder proposals over the years. Unlike Exxon, however, Suncor has not yet publicly pushed back. But why not? Suncor has worked concertedly to improve its “emissions intensity”, which is the volume of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of oil or natural gas produced, and has held its overall greenhouse gas emissions essentially flat, as the accompanying graph shows. [Editor’s note: the recent passage of the Liberals’ Bill C-59, which makes it illegal for energy companies and advocacy groups to defend themselves, on pain of criminal penalties, caused a vast amount of useful technical information to be abruptly removed from the internet.] Why commit to an arbitrary target like net zero, especially one that would necessitate massive declines in the use of oil and natural gas? Net zero wouldn’t increase shareholder value. Quite the opposite, since fossil fuels are Suncor’s main business.

Although InvestNow’s proposal was rejected by Suncor’s board, our hope is that we planted a seed in the directors’ minds about their duty of care and fiduciary obligations to the company’s shareholders and that they will soon find the courage and conviction to say “No” to the activists and “Yes” to shareholder proposals like ours.

Canada’s shareholder proposal regime was put in place as a response to the U.S.’s rule on shareholder proposals. Hopefully, the boards of directors at Canadian corporations and financial institutions, investors, customers and citizens at large will see what is happening south of the border and will add to the still-budding pushback movement in our own country. It’s time.

Gina Pappano is executive director of InvestNow and was formerly head of market intelligence at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV).

Source of main image: Kenzie Todd, retrieved from History and Future of Divestment at St. Olaf.

Related Topics:#C2CJournal #EnergyIndustry #ESG #NetZero ActivistInvestors CorporateGovernance feature GinaPappano InvestNow ShareholdersVSStakeholders

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Natural Gas – Not Nuclear – Is the Key to Powering North America’s Future

Published on January 11, 2025

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From the C2C Journal

By Gwyn Morgan

After decades on the outs with environmentalists and regulators, nuclear power is being heralded as a key component for a “net zero” future of clean, reliable energy. Its promise is likely to fall short, however, due to some hard realities. As North America grapples with the challenge of providing secure, affordable and sustainable energy amidst soaring electricity demand, it is time to accept this fact: natural gas remains the most practical solution for powering our grid and economy.

Nuclear power’s limitations are rooted in its costs, risks and delays. Even under ideal circumstances, building or restarting a nuclear facility is arduous. Consider Microsoft’s much-publicized plan to restart the long-dormant Unit 1 reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. This project is lauded as proof of an incipient “nuclear revival”, but despite leveraging existing infrastructure it will cost US$1.6 billion and take four years to bring online.

This is not a unique case. Across North America, nuclear energy projects face monumental lead times. The new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs), often touted as a game-changer, is still largely theoretical. In Canada – Alberta in particular – discussions around SMRs have been ongoing for years, with no concrete progress. The most optimistic projections estimate the first SMR in Western Canada might be operational by 2034.

The reality is that nuclear energy cannot scale quickly enough to meet urgent electricity needs. Canada’s power grid is already strained, and electricity demand is set to grow significantly, driven by electric vehicles and enormous data centres for AI applications. Nuclear power, even if expanded aggressively, cannot fill the gap within the necessary timeframes.

Natural gas, by contrast, is abundant, flexible, low-risk – and highly affordable. It accounts for 40 percent of U.S. electricity generation and plays a critical role in Canada’s energy mix. Unlike nuclear, natural gas infrastructure can be built rapidly, ensuring that new capacity comes online when it’s needed – not decades later. Gas-fired plants are cost-effective and capable of providing consistent, large-scale power while being capable of rapid starts and shut-downs, making them suitable for meeting both base-load and “peaking” power demands.

Climate-related concerns surrounding natural gas need to be put in perspective. Natural gas is the lowest-emission fossil fuel and produces less than half the carbon dioxide of coal per unit of energy output. It is also highly adaptable, supporting renewable energy integration by compensating for the intermittency of wind and solar power.

Nuclear energy advocates frequently highlight its zero-emission credentials, yet they overlook its immense challenges, not just the front-end problems of high cost and long lead times, but ongoing waste disposal and future decommissioning.

Natural gas, by comparison, presents fewer risks. Its production and distribution systems are well-established, and North America is uniquely positioned to benefit from the vast reserves underlying all three countries on the continent. Despite low prices and ever-increasing regulatory obstacles, Canada’s natural gas production has been setting new records.

Streamlining regulatory processes and expanding liquefied natural gas (LNG) export capacity would help revive Canada’s battered economy, with plenty of natural gas left over to help meet growing domestic electricity needs.

Critics argue that investing in natural gas is at odds with the “energy transition” to a glorious net zero future, but this oversimplifies the related challenges and ignores hard realities. By reducing reliance on dirtier fuels like coal, natural gas can help lower a country’s greenhouse gas emissions while providing the reliability needed to support economic growth and renewable energy integration.

Europe’s energy crisis following the recent reduction of Russian gas imports underscores natural gas’s vital role in maintaining reliable electricity supplies. As nations like Germany still phase out nuclear power due to the sheer blind ideology of their left-wing parties, they’re growing more dependent on natural gas to keep the lights (mostly) on and the factories (partially) humming.

Europe is already a destination for LNG exported from the U.S. Gulf Coast, and American LNG exports will soon resume growth under the incoming Trump Administration. Canada has the resources and know-how to similarly scale up its LNG exports; all we need is a supportive federal government.

For all its theoretical benefits, nuclear power remains impractical for meeting immediate and medium-term energy demands. Its high costs, lengthy timelines and significant remaining public opposition make it unlikely to serve as North America’s energy backbone.

Natural gas, on the other hand, is affordable, scalable and reliable. It is the fuel that powers industries, keeps homes warm and provides the stability our electricity grid needs – whether or not we ever transition to “net zero”. By prioritizing investment in natural gas infrastructure and expanding its use, we can meet today’s energy challenges head-on while laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s innovations.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.

C2C Journal

A Rush to the Exits: Forget Immigration, Canada has an Emigration crisis

Published on January 10, 2025

Todayville

From the C2C Journal

By Scott Inniss

Canada’s open immigration policy has often been hailed as a positive thing, contributing to the building
of the country. Yet the Trudeau government’s decade-long determination to drive immigration numbers
ever-higher – a policy that public outcry now has it scrambling away from – has obscured an important
and discouraging phenomenon. Every year, tens of thousands of Canadians leave the country, taking
their skills and ambitions with them, and leaving Canada diminished.

Emigration is the flipside of the immigration issue — a side that has been largely ignored. Statistics
Canada estimates that more than 104,000 people left Canada in 2023-2024, a number than has been
rising for the past few years. Another study put the number of Canadian citizens living abroad in 2016 at
between 2.9 million and 5.5 million, with a “medium” scenario of 4,038,700 — or about 12.6 percent of
the Canadian population that year (the latest for which this kind of analysis exists).

This trend isn’t just an abstract problem; it undermines the very economic goals policymakers hope to
achieve through immigration. Emigrants are younger, better educated, and earn higher incomes than
the average Canadian, according to Statcan’s study: “The departure of people with these characteristics
raises concerns about the loss of significant economic potential and the retention of a highly skilled
workforce.” Canada is losing its best and brightest, many of them to the U.S. A survey by the U.S. Census
Bureau this year said the number of people moving from Canada to the U.S. was up 70 percent from a
decade ago.

Canada’s economic decline is big reason for the exodus. In 2022, all 10 Canadian provinces had median
per capita incomes lower than the lowest-earning American state. Canada’s per capita GDP growth has
also stagnated, with projections placing the country dead last among OECD nations out to 2060. Our
productivity is in decline and business investment is moribund, meaning employers in other countries
are able to pay more and compete for qualified labour.

The high cost of living, particularly skyrocketing housing costs, is an increasingly large factor pushing
skilled Canadians abroad. A recent survey by Angus Reid reported that 28 percent of Canadians are
considering leaving their province due to unaffordable housing, with 42 percent of those considering a
move outside Canada.

Even immigrants to Canada are losing faith and moving on. A recent report from the Institute for
Canadian Citizenship, entitled The Leaky Bucket, found that “onward” migration had been steadily
increasing since the 1980s. A follow-up survey of more than 15,000 immigrants and found that 26
percent said they are likely to leave Canada within two years, with the proportion rising to over 30
percent among federally selected economic immigrants—those with the highest scores in the points
system.

“While the fairy tale of Canada as a land of opportunity still holds for many newcomers,” wrote Daniel
Bernhard, CEO of the ICC, there is undeniably a “burgeoning disillusionment. After giving Canada a try,
growing numbers of immigrants are saying ‘no thanks,’ and moving on.” It’s a particularly stark
phenomenon considering that most immigrants have come from much poorer, less developed and often
autocratic or unsafe nations; that these people find Canada – for decades considered the ultimate
destination among those seeking a better life – to be such a disappointment that the best response is to
leave is a damning indictment.

Consider Elena Secara, an immigrant from Romania who built a life here only to find Canada’s economic
reality falling short of her expectations. After nearly two decades, Secara plans to return to Romania, a
country she sees as improving, while Canada, she says, “is getting worse and worse. Canada is
declining…In Romania there are much more opportunities for professionals, the medical system is
better, the food is better.” And, she adds with a laugh, “Even the roads are better.” One of her sons has
already voted with his feet, and is now living in Romania.

That a country like Romania, for years one of Europe’s poorest and most corrupt nations, can now
attract emigrants from Canada should be sobering for policymakers. Canada is facing ever-greater
competition just as it enters the second decade of what may be its longest and most serious economic
deterioration since Confederation.

Each emigrant lost represents not just an individual choice but a systemic failure to provide opportunity
at home. As the revolving door of emigration spins faster, Canada faces a reckoning. Our political leaders
must address the housing crisis, lower tax burdens, and foster a more competitive economy to retain
the talent Canada desperately needs. Without action, Canada’s silent exodus risks becoming a defining
national failure—one that leaves the country less resilient, less innovative, and less prepared for the
future.

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

Scott Inniss is a Montreal writer.