The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: How to Read Between the Lies

“Environmental racism” is frequently tossed about Canadian society these days. But what does it actually mean? It’s not about favouring white spruce trees over black spruce trees. Rather, it involves the twisting of basic economic principles into a vicious, politically loaded accusation. The same sense of confusion is sown with other linguistic tricks such as “organizational elder abuse”, “excessive net profits”, “renovictions” and “stakeholder capitalism”. As left-wing politicians and activists seek to redefine fundamental economic and financial concepts as malign forces and to recast socialist objectives as free-market values, Peter Shawn Taylor offers puzzled readers a practical guide to navigating the etymological fog.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

—Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic; they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.” That is how Victor Klemperer, a German Jew who miraculously survived Hitler’s Germany, described the Nazi regime’s manipulation of words and their meaning in his 1957 book The Language of the Third Reich. The endless public repetition of fascist idioms and phrases regarding race, duty and country, Klemperer argued, turned the German population into unthinking servants of the Nazi cause.

The approach in the Soviet Union was different in tactics but no less destructive. “Total power over the Word gives the Master of the Word a magical power over all communications,” wrote Russian historian Mikhail Heller in his 1988 book Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man. By using fear and intimidation to control what its citizens could say, the Communist regime was able to control what they thought as well. “The Soviet language became the most important means of preventing people from acquiring more knowledge than the state wished,” explained Heller.

The power of words: As Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer described in his book The Language of the Third Reich, the endless repetition of Nazi slogans and idioms about race and duty turned the German people into unthinking automatons in service to Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime.

Western democracies crushed Nazism and then faced down the Soviet Empire through intense military and economic competition as well as the promise of freedom. Today, however, these forces of linguistic control are again being wielded by propagandists embedded deep within our own society. It is now common for words to be assigned meanings that either signify the opposite of what they once did, or are bastardized in some way as to be unmoored from any permanent or coherent definition. And always with political purpose.

The redefinition of sex as socially-constructed gender and the creation of a multiplicity of gender identities – enforced by intense institutional pressure but lacking any scientific evidence or logic – is just one example of this destructive wordplay. The poisonous concept of “anti-racism”, which has become cover for the implementation of many explicitly racist policies, is another.

What were once benign notions of markets, entrepreneurship and the free exchange of ideas, goods and services have been corrupted and/or smeared by the left.

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As Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt recently pointed out in the National Post, a blizzard of new terms has been invented to remove the concept of personal responsibility from all public discourse. The homeless, once “vagrants”, are now referred to as “the unsheltered”, the free distribution of harmful illegal drugs has become “harm reduction”, and self-administered drug overdoses have been rebranded as “accidental poisonings”.

Everyone’s a victim. As Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt (bottom) has pointed out, current terminology regarding drug use erases any sense of personal responsibility; the free distribution of harmful illegal drugs is now called “harm reduction” and self-administered overdoses are “accidental poisonings”. (Sources of photos: (top) Ted’s photos – Stand With Ukraine, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; (bottom) Christopher Dummitt)

The underlying purpose, Dummitt explains, is ideological. “The intention is clear: to remove stigma and any overt suggestion of personal responsibility,” he wrote. “The new names are meant to reorient our thinking so that we understand that the real causes of misfortune to be societal or systemic. If a word has shameful connotations, that seems to be enough to warrant change.”

The same conceptual reorganization is at play with how Canadians discuss fundamental economic and intellectual concepts as well. What were once benign notions of markets, entrepreneurship and the free exchange of ideas, goods and services have been corrupted and/or smeared by the left in the same way that personal responsibility has been erased from public conversations through the appearance of new words and meanings for drug use and other individual failings.

With this damaging process threatening the very conception of private property and individual economic freedom, C2C Journal has curated a list of 11 terms currently being used propagandistically by the left. It includes long-established words redefined in deliberately unsettling ways and tired old socialist objectives disguised as market-friendly innovations as well as some outright fabrications. We call this our “Anti-Capitalist Dictionary”. Each word or phrase listed below is introduced with an example of its typical current usage (that is to say, its misusage), along with the source of the example, and then a discussion/deconstruction of its flaws. Finally, we offer a truthful alternative to use in its place. As they say, forewarned is forearmed.

Child Care Deserts

Typical usage: “Saskatchewan has the highest proportion of children living in child care deserts by far.”

—Not Done Yet: $10-a-day child care requires addressing Canada’s child care deserts, by David MacDonald and Martha Friendly, May 2023

A “child care desert” refers to an area that is said to be short of daycare spaces. And while the federal government’s heavily subsidized, $10 per day child care program was promoted as the means to create a jungle of new spaces at a phenomenally low cost, Canada appears strangely awash in “deserts” as parents everywhere complain about a worsening shortage of spaces. Among child care advocates, this situation is cause for even greater government spending (or “investment” as they misleadingly put it). The desert must be defeated!

A self-inflicted “desert”: The dire shortage of childcare spaces across Canada is largely the result of federal policies that forbid or curtail the participation of for-profit centres in Ottawa’s $10 per day child care program. (Sources of photo: Global News)

As previous C2C Journal articles have shown, however, this rampant desertification is a direct result of a federal plan that explicitly discriminates against for-profit daycare providers. In many provinces, private operators deliver the majority of child care spaces. If the goal is to boost the supply of practically anything, the private sector is nearly always nimbler and more cost-effective than the public or non-profit sectors. For this reason, Ottawa’s attack on private child care providers is doing great harm to parents. It’s no coincidence that Saskatchewan is the Sahara of Canada’s child care deserts; it also has the nation’s lowest share of for-profit child care. By treating Canada’s child care shortages as some sort of external force of nature – one that only governments can withstand and conquer – child care activists are deliberately ignoring the importance of private capital and entrepreneurship to the daycare ecosystem.

Accurate alternative: “An absence of private sector supply.”

Denialism

Typical usage: “Residential school denialists employ an array of rhetorical arguments. The end game of denialism is to obscure truth about Canada’s Indian Residential School system in ways that ultimately protect the status quo as well as guilty parties.”

—Truth before reconciliation: 8 ways to identify and confront Residential School denialism, by Daniel Heath Justice and Sean Carleton, University of British Columbia website

“Denialism” is frequently used as a slur against anyone who questions an established narrative. Most recently it has been applied to those who challenge claims that Canada’s Indian Residential School system was a deliberate program of genocide. But it also serves to advance numerous other ideological agendas. For example, Ross McKitrick, an economist at the University of Guelph, Ontario well-known for his rigorous, science-based approach to climate change, notes that he’s often denounced as a “denialist” when he uses evidence to point out holes in accepted green energy policy orthodoxy. This includes revealing the true (and often astronomical) cost of policies to “fight” climate change.

Sticks and stones: For his science-based criticism of green energy policies, Ross McKitrick (left), an economist at the University of Guelph, is frequently tarred with claims he is a “denialist” by opponents unwilling to debate him on the merits of his arguments. (Sources: (left screenshot) Bridge City News/YouTube; (right photo) powerofgreatbarrierreef, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

“The facts are clearly on one side, but if you stand up and point this out, you get called a denier,” McKitrick says in an interview. The insult’s impact is intensified by the fact the term originally stems from denial of the Holocaust. Observes McKitrick: “Opponents are thus treating you like a psychology case, rather than engaging with you on the merits of your argument.” It is a thoroughly nasty dodge for activists who are unprepared to defend their own position. Asked whether he has a preferred term for someone who questions established beliefs from a fact-based perspective, McKitrick suggests, somewhat wryly, “glorious truth-teller.” That works for us.

Accurate alternative: “Glorious truth-telling.”

Environmental Racism

Typical usage: “Environmental racism is a direct by-product of colonialism.”

—Fast Talk on Environmental Racism in Canada, Canadian Human Rights Commission, February 16, 2023

“Environmental racism” is a deliberately provocative term invented to explain why low-income individuals and families tend to live in less desirable (and hence cheaper) neighbourhoods or areas. Given that black and Indigenous families have a greater likelihood of having low incomes than other groups, this outcome is now declared racist.

Prior to the modern-day habit of labelling every situation of unequal outcomes in this way, such a scenario was known to economists as Ricardian land rents, after 19^th century British economist David Ricardo. It was Ricardo’s insight that the price of land is determined by its most productive use. If land on the outskirts of town or nearer a pulp mill is less desirable or less productive than land in a city’s downtown core or beside a lake, then it will also be cheaper – and thus more affordable for people with lower incomes.

Cheap room for rent: As 19th century British economist David Ricardo (left) first explained, the price of land is determined by its most productive use, which is why low-income families tend to live in less desirable – and less expensive – neighbourhoods. (Source of right photo: Shutterstock)

“Most people don’t want to live adjacent to heavy industry et cetera, so people with lower incomes tend to move into those areas,” economist McKitrick observes. But calling this process environmental racism “gets the cause and effect backwards,” he says. There is no prejudice at work; low-income people moving to cheaper areas is simply a demonstration of the market at work.

Accurate alternative: “Cheap land means cheap rent.”

Equity

Typical Usage: “Equity: the principle of considering people’s unique experiences and differing situations, and ensuring they have access to the resources and opportunities that are necessary for them to attain just outcomes. Equity aims to eliminate disparities and disproportions that are rooted in historical and contemporary injustices and oppression.”

—Guide on Equity, Inclusion and Diversity, Government of Canada, 2022

Words turned upside-down: As Wilfrid Laurier University finance professor William McNally points out, “equity” as currently practiced on campuses entails deliberate unfairness towards certain groups. The same linguistic inversion has occurred with the related terms “diversity” and “inclusion”.

Not that long ago, equity was defined as “the quality of being impartial; fairness,” as a desk copy of the 1988 Collins Concise Dictionary of the English Language explains. More recently, however, this definition has been turned on its head. “Equity”, as currently employed by governments, activists and other woke-infected institutions, entails the deliberately unequal treatment of individuals in order to fabricate uniform outcomes between groups. Instead of being fair to all job candidates, for example, equity now requires that individual applicants be treated very differently based on group membership or characteristics such as race, ethnicity, sex, gender or disability.

“My own school is a great example of this inherent unfairness,” says William McNally, a business professor at Wilfrid Laurier University’s Lazaridis School of Business and Economics in Waterloo, Ontario and an outspoken critic of diversity, equity and inclusion policies. “We now have teaching positions that are only available to black or Indigenous applicants. Whites are not allowed to apply,” he says in an interview. By suppressing or even abandoning the key criterion of individual merit, the school’s hiring process is being manipulated to achieve a particular, ideologically-driven outcome that is unfair to most potential candidates. In similar fashion, McNally observes, diversity has come to mean “people who look differently, but all think the same.” And inclusion now means the deliberate exclusion of many qualified candidates.

Accurate alternative: “Blatant favouritism.”

Excessive Net Profits

Typical Usage: “The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada consider implementing policies to effectively tackle excessive net profits in monopolistic and oligopolistic sectors in the food supply chain, which are driving up prices for consumers.”

—Report of the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food, House of Commons, May 2024

A recent House of Commons Agriculture and Agri-Food subcommittee report on food prices concocted the phrase “excessive net profits” to attack grocery companies. While politically useful, given popular concern over rising food costs, it betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge about accounting and prices. It is redundant to refer to “net profits”, as profits are already calculated on a net basis. If the intent is to examine some share of those profits, the term unhelpfully fails to indicate which items should be netted out.

Villainizing the retailer: A recent House of Commons subcommittee blamed food inflation on the “excessive net profits” of food stores. In fact, grocery retailer Loblaws’ profit margin is a measly 3.4 percent. (Source of photo: BlogTO)

As for the concept of what constitutes an excessive level of profits, that is an entirely subjective matter beyond the ken of any subcommittee. The profit margin (net earnings divided by gross revenue) at Loblaw Companies Ltd., the corporation at the centre of today’s political ire about food inflation, is a measly 3.4 percent, based on its most recent financial statements. By way of comparison, the profit margin at online retailer Amazon is a robust 9.1 percent, while at computer chip manufacturer Nvidia it’s an eye-popping 55 percent. How excessive is that? With store-bought food inflation peaking at 11.4 percent in 2023, the rising cost of food would be a problem for Canadians even if Loblaw operated on a break-even basis.

By misidentifying the problem of profits, the Liberal-dominated subcommittee promotes the socialistic notion that government has a legitimate role in setting prices and establishing an appropriate level of income across industries. As the devastating effects of rent controls on the supply of rental housing readily illustrate, this is complete folly. Profit is the essential inducement for entrepreneurs to provide needed goods and services. And rising profits in a given industry or in the production of a given good or service signal that there is opportunity for additional profitable competition; this, in turn, brings prices back down. Canada is already experiencing a productivity crisis driven by a lack of capital and investment in productivity-enhancing machinery; telling entrepreneurs there is a government-mandated upper limit on their profitability will only exacerbate this potentially catastrophic problem.

Accurate alternative: “There is no competition without profit.”

Financialization

Typical usage: “The financialization of housing is recognized as a trend that is undermining the realization of the right to adequate housing.”

—The Financialization of Housing: A Summary Report for the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, by Martine August, June 2022

What used to be known as ready access to capital – and considered a good thing – has been ominously relabeled as “financialization”, and become the all-purpose boogeyman of Canada’s housing crisis. Rather than pointing to the obvious imbalance between constrained housing construction and soaring demand caused by runaway immigration, the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate (FHA) repeatedly claims that housing-industry investors seeking to earn a return on their capital are the true cause of Canada’s housing affordability crisis. And the FHA’s solution is to eliminate the profit motive from the housing supply by advocating for a government/regulatory takeover of the industry which would make it impossible for entrepreneurs to survive.

The boogeyman of the housing industry: According to the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, “financialization” is to blame for Canada’s current housing crisis, and the solution is to eliminate entrepreneurs and profit from the entire sector. (Source of photo: Colin N. Perkel/Shutterstock)

The fight against financialization also has the FHA demanding that Ottawa erase any tax benefits associated with real estate investment trusts (REITs). Such a policy, as an EY consultancy report (link requires signing in) found, would “slow growth in the supply of available rental units” and thus worsen the housing crisis. Despite an earlier promise to stamp out financialization, however, Ottawa recently promised not to levy any new taxes on REITs. This was a rare wise move by Ottawa on housing policy. Canada requires more investors, more real estate developers and more property managers. Without the enormous financial resources and deep expertise of motivated real estate investors, including REITs, it will be impossible to meet the country’s need for 3.5 million new homes by 2030.

Accurate alternative: “Building a lot of homes requires a lot of money.”

Living Wage

Typical usage: “The living wage is a bare-bones calculation that looks at the amount that a family of four needs to earn to meet their expenses.”

—Living Wage for Families BC website

Promoted by social advocacy groups as a replacement for the minimum wage, a “living wage” is always much higher than the legal minimum since it is intended to allow a sole earner to support a family not merely with bread on the table and a roof over their heads, but with other amenities such as holidays, a savings account and a gift budget. In other words, it is intended to provide a single-income household with a middle-class lifestyle.

Yet research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business shows that only 1.5 percent of minimum-wage earners are single parents with a child to support. Presumably, even fewer comprise a 1950s-style nuclear family with one wage-earner and one stay-at-home parent. The vast majority of minimum-wage earners are actually under 25 and living with their parents. Accordingly, replacing current minimum wages with a living wage of $25 per hour or more will not make life better for struggling families. Rather, it will harm the economy’s youngest and least employable workers by making them too expensive to hire. A better approach can be found in Alberta, where the minimum wage for workers under 18 years is two dollars less per hour than for adults, reflecting their lower productivity and greater need for training.

A tiny sliver of the pie: According to research by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, a mere 1.5 percent of minimum wage earners support a child, while 59 percent live at home with their parents. The imposition of a universal – and much higher – “living wage” would thus price many unskilled teenagers out of the workforce.

“Living wage” is also an example of the left’s frequent linguistic tactic of framing market-based alternatives to their favoured policies as despicable, if not deadly. What is the opposite of a living wage? It must be a death wage.

Accurate alternative: “Youth-employment-reducing wage.”

Organizational Elder Abuse

Typical usage: “Lions Housing Centres and the Lions Club of Winnipeg have been accused of inflicting ‘organizational elder abuse’ on seniors because of the way they sold Lions Place to a for-profit real estate company in 2023.”

— “Tenants of former Lions Place victims of ‘organizational elder abuse’: report” by Kevin Rollason, Winnipeg Free Press, April 23, 2024

This phrase appears to have been invented by the left-wing lobby group Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) in a report on the sale of a Winnipeg seniors’ home run by the Lions Club, a charitable organization, to a private firm earlier this year. A Betrayal of Trust: Exploring the Financialization of Lions Place in Winnipeg as a Case of Organizational Elder Abuse offers no evidence that residents of the home have been mistreated in any way. Rather, the mere fact that the new owner, Mainstreet Equities, intends to make a profit while continuing to operate the facility amounts to “elder abuse” in the CCPA’s eyes. (Note that the report also makes use of the bogus term “financialization” for a twofer of leftist linguistic misdirection.)

Inventing abuse: The recent sale of a seniors’ home in Winnipeg was declared “organizational elder abuse” by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, reflecting the left-wing view that making a profit while delivering care is somehow illegal or immoral. (Source of photo: Josh Crabb/CBC)

“Organizational elder abuse” is an insult to the entire private sector and reminiscent of campaigns that seek to banish for-profit operators from other sectors dominated by high-cost, inefficient public-sector unions, such as health care and child care. The fact that actual elder abuse is a criminal act promotes the left-wing notion that even the most basic economic function of earning a profit is somehow illegal or immoral.

Wordplay aside, the private sector has a critical and successful role to play in the provision of assisted-living and long-term care for seniors in a number of provinces, as this and this C2C article described. And, judging by the long waiting lists for obtaining residency in many of these centres, seniors generally like what these companies are offering.

Accurate alternative: “Asset sold by a motivated seller to a willing buyer.”

Renoviction/Demoviction

Typical usage: “Renoviction is a huge source of housing loss.”

—Ontario Renoviction Report 2024, ACORN Canada, February 2024

So far, the anti-capitalist terms evaluated have employed real English words that can be compared to their ordinary, historical or technical meanings. Here, we encounter complete gibberish. “Renoviction” or “demoviction” are portmanteaus invented to describe the situation in which a landlord evicts existing tenants in order to clear the way for a substantial renovation to an apartment that can then be re-let at higher rent, or tears down the entire building to put up something new, again to generate greater revenue.

Why not let it rot instead? While renovations improve the local housing stock, some cities would rather stand in the way of progress and have passed renoviction bylaws preventing landlords from removing tenants in order to fix up their apartments.

While these processes are perfectly legal under certain conditions – and wholly understandable given the need for constant housing renewal – they have lately become nasty insults used by housing advocates and politicians to denigrate landlords generally. Some cities are even enacting bylaws to prevent both practices, erasing landlords’ property rights as owners and putting tenants in control of buildings they do not own. Such policies will clearly discourage further investment in housing at a time when the country desperately needs more and better houses. Investing one’s own money to improve the local stock of housing was once considered a good thing for everyone. Today, however, some politicians would rather let it all rot. The solution lies in recognizing landlords as the best-situated and most-effective custodians of the country’s rental stock.

Accurate alternative: “Improving Canada’s housing stock at no cost to taxpayers.”

Responsible Investing/Sustainable Investing/Impact Investing

Typical usage: “Responsible investment (RI) refers to the incorporation of environmental, social and governance factors (ESG) into the selection and management of investments. RI has boomed in recent years as investors have recognized the opportunity for better risk-adjusted returns, while at the same time, contributing to important social and environmental issues.”

—Responsible Investment Association website

“Responsible”, “sustainable” or “impact” investing holds that investors should weigh a variety of non-financial goals when choosing where to put their money. The goal is to “do good” with one’s investments by, for example, choosing green energy firms over those in the oil and natural gas sector. But adding moralistic objectives to one’s investment mix is “delusional”, writes Aswath Damodaran, a widely-respected guru of financial valuation at the Stern Business School at New York University. It is also another example of the twisted language of ideologically-driven alternatives, similar to “living wage” as discussed above. Having identified a practice as “responsible” investing, all other forms of investing – every stock, every bond, every mutual fund, every holding in every pensioner’s retirement fund – must implicitly be irresponsible.

More like “irresponsible” investing: Financial valuation expert Aswath Damodaran of New York University’s Stern Business School considers the inclusion of environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals as part of “responsible” or “sustainable” investing to be “delusional”, because of the additional costs and losses it imposes on investors.

While the vast majority of impact investors believe their ESG-flavoured decisions are costless – that is, have no effect on their overall investment returns – diverting their focus away from financial performance inevitably lowers returns because it constrains the list of potential investment opportunities, as Damodaran points out. It also leads investors to tolerate inefficiency and costly diversions among the “sustainable” companies they favour. As Damodaran observes, “After 15 years and trillions invested in its name, impact investing, as practiced now, has made little progress on the social and environmental problems that it purports to solve.” As he concludes, “Is it not time to try something different?” Pushback against these investment techniques is well underway in the U.S., and just beginning in Canada.

Accurate alternative: “Making less money while doing no good.”

Stakeholder Capitalism

Typical usage: “Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. It is not a social or ideological agenda. It is not ‘woke.’ It is capitalism.”

—The Power of Capitalism, by Larry Fink, 2022 letter to Blackrock shareholders

Popularized by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, “stakeholder capitalism” involves corporations making decisions that may go against the best interests of their shareholders by pursuing the interests of other groups – or “stakeholders” – such as government regulators, community activists, fashionable global causes or the public at large. This can include accommodating the demands of organizations explicitly hostile to the company and its industry, as well as a multiplicity of other targets comprising social and environmental indicators unrelated to the firm’s core business. Climate-related “Net Zero” commitments by various corporations are an obvious current example.

“Under stakeholder capitalism, CEOs and boards are supposed to weigh all these different competing interests,” says Laurier finance professor McNally in an interview. “But they get to choose which ones – it could be gender equity or decarbonization or racial social justice. And this is a profoundly undemocratic process. The shareholders who actually own the company don’t have any say in it.” Not surprisingly, these corporate fetishes rarely come cheap, and there is evidence that stakeholder-focused companies earn lower returns than good old-fashioned shareholder-driven ones.

Spending someone else’s money: As Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman (left) noted in a 1970 New York Times essay, so-called “stakeholder” capitalism – subordinating shareholders’ rights in favour of other interests – is tantamount to theft. At right, activists protest Chevron’s annual shareholder meeting. (Source of right photo: Rainforest Action Network, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

For the alternative viewpoint, McNally points to a famous 1970 New York Times essay by Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. In it, Friedman argued that executives who allow political or social justice interests to distract them from pursuing their shareholders’ best interests – above all, safeguarding their capital – are “spending someone else’s money” on pet projects and should be considered guilty of theft. Nonetheless, advocates such as Fink are now promoting stakeholder capitalism – what Friedman called “pure and unadulterated socialism” – as the only true form of capitalism. It is a complete inversion of reality.

Accurate alternative: “Playing politics with other people’s money.”

Conclusion

The above list is obviously not exhaustive. Indeed, it is barely a beginning. The primary purpose of the Anti-Capitalist Dictionary is to remind readers that words matter and alert them to the widespread presence of corrupted, concocted or bogus terms in general usage. Calling wind turbines “green” or “sustainable” energy, to mention some additional possible entries, not only engenders positive feelings among many people, but influences their thinking about what these things actually are and how they work. It is thus useful that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, for example, now refers to wind and solar power as – entirely accurately – “intermittent and unreliable”. This draws attention to the fact they cannot be relied upon to serve as base-load power in the way that nuclear, natural gas-fired or hydroelectric facilities can and do. There is nothing sustainable about an energy source that cannot be trusted when needed.

Having identified a practice as ‘responsible’ investing, all other forms of investing – every stock, every bond, every mutual fund, every holding in every pensioner’s retirement fund – must implicitly be irresponsible.

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Beyond these specific examples, the Anti-Capitalist Dictionary’s other purpose is to reveal the damage being done to fundamental economic concepts that are crucial to the flourishing of a democratic society. It has been proven time and again throughout history (and often at great cost) that markets – the free and open exchange of ideas, goods or services – are the best and most efficient method of determining values, assessing needs and allocating resources. Today, however, as in totalitarian regimes of the past, we are witnessing a determined effort to replace time-proven market mechanisms with systems that impose government interference and diktat as the operating devices.

One of the main tools for this revolution is language. In this way, landlords have become cold-hearted “renoviction” machines, corporations stand accused of earning “excessive net profits” at the expense of hapless families, capital investment in new housing – “financialization” – is to blame for Canada’s housing crisis, the legitimate sale of a building is “elder abuse”, heterodox thinkers are “denialists”, socialism is really capitalism, and so on down the rabbit hole. Words have become weapons aimed at destroying markets and individual freedoms. This must be resisted.

Making lies truthful and murder respectable: George Orwell famously warned of the many linguistic tricks and falsehoods used by propagandists in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language. The only defence against this onslaught of confusion, he argued, was a rigorous commitment to truth and clarity in one’s own writing and speech. (Source of right photo: Vic Hinterlang/Shutterstock)

In his famous 1946 essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell anticipated many of the linguistic tricks and falsehoods described above. “Political language,” he wrote, “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits.” The truth starts one word at a time.

Peter Shawn Taylor is senior features editor at C2C Journal. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Related Topics:#C2CJournal #PeterShawnTaylor AntiCapitalistDictionary feature

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Why the Trump Administration is Unlikely to Impose Import Tariffs on Canadian Oil and Natural Gas

Published on November 25, 2024

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By George Koch

Few things about Donald Trump’s recent election are causing worse disarray worldwide than the incoming U.S. President’s vow to erect a tariff wall against all imports in order to spur a resurgence in American manufacturing might. Canada’s up to $200-billion-a-year worth of oil and natural gas exports lie at stake, feared to be among the new Administration’s tariff targets. But how strong is the basis for such fears? Probing the political psychology of Trump’s economic and trade policies and examining the intricate mechanism that is North America’s vast integrated oil and natural gas sector, George Koch illuminates the role Canadian energy can play in the U.S. economic revival and the Trump team’s geopolitical drive for global “energy dominance”.

Tariff,” U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump was fond of saying with a smirk, “it’s my favorite word.” It was enough to curdle the blood and wobble the knees of political leaders, trade officials and business groups around the world – not least in export-dependent Canada. This was one Trumpian campaign line not swatted aside by critics as bombast, trolling, dog-whistling to the “extreme right” or unhinged fantasy. And with evident good reason.

After all, it was President #45 who after rising to political prominence largely on his promise to go after “bad trade deals” had upended 70 years of U.S. trade policy by imposing tariffs on Chinese (and some Canadian) imports and demanding to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. It was returning candidate Trump who picked as his running mate J.D. Vance, whose life story growing up amidst family wreckage in rural Ohio is almost the embodied result of a hollowed-out manufacturing economy, and who today is an articulate frontman for the something-less-than-free school of international trade. And it is President-elect Trump who has nominated prominent advocates of “America-first” trade policy – in which tariffs are central – to become his Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Treasury.

Tariff king: Consistent with his first presidency, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to pursue an “America-first” trade policy this time. Shown, Trump speaking during an America First Policy Institute gala at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida estate, November 2024. (Source of photo: AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Few sectors in any country stand to suffer greater damage from U.S. tariffs than Canadian energy. Canada’s fossil fuel production is at record levels, with crude oil averaging 5.8 million barrels per day so far this year and natural gas well over 18 billion cubic feet per day. Exports of these key commodities (plus natural gas “liquids” like ethane and propane) are valued at more than $134 billion per year – another measure has it at US$160 billion – with exports of petrochemicals generating billions more. Canada’s oil and gas sector is directly responsible for $210 billion of the nation’s GDP and 25 percent of its exports.

Yet while the industry today is a marvel of leading technology, deep expertise and operating efficiency, Canadian energy remains costly to produce, heavily taxed and saddled with ever-increasing regulations, such as the recently announced federal “emissions cap”. Moreover, the remoteness of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin – the world-scale producing region that covers most of Alberta plus northeast B.C., southern Saskatchewan and a corner of Manitoba – imposes costs not incurred by U.S. producers. Constraints on export capacity effectively trap oil and gas within Western Canada, dampening regional benchmark commodity prices. And the industry remains over-dependent on the U.S. market; the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline will enable at best 20 percent of Canada’s crude oil production to access offshore markets, while the country’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminal is not yet operational.

This critical industry thus sits exposed and vulnerable to U.S. tariffs. A levy of 10-20 percent – the rate Trump has said he wants to slap on all imports – would be catastrophic, reducing Canada’s energy exports by an estimated 22 percent, causing domestic pricing to collapse and, with it, any new capital investment. Thousands would lose their jobs and government deficits would soar. Rory Johnston, a Toronto-based oil market researcher and founder of Commodity Context, describes Canada as “uniquely vulnerable to market pressure posed by U.S. refineries.”

“Uniquely vulnerable”: Canada’s oil and natural gas production is setting records and generating 25 percent of the country’s overall export earnings; a 10-20 percent U.S. import tariff could wreak catastrophic damage. (Sources: (graph) CAPP; (left photo) MikoFox, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0; (right photo) Green Energy Futures, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

But is the threat of such a tariff imminent – or even credible? The evidence to date – partial and indirect though it may be – suggests not. More profoundly, the logic of U.S. self-interest and of Trump’s stated policy objectives points away from tariffs on Canadian oil and natural gas.

First the evidence. Trump had barely been declared victor in the November 5 Presidential election before voices on both sides of the border began talking about creating a tariff “exemption” for Canadian fossil fuels. Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce in Trump’s first term, called fears of such a tariff “overblown” and said he “can’t imagine” his former boss imposing them. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith also said she was “not worried”. Then again, she also wrangled for herself invitations to key events such as next month’s meeting of the Western Governors’ Association, as well as Trump’s Inauguration in January, to make sure Alberta’s message gets through.

Similar views have been expressed by other knowledgeable sources from industry, trade and investment organizations. They note that Trump has done this very thing before; the renegotiated U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement of 2019 notably excused oil and natural gas flows from any tariffs. A further favourable indication is Alberta’s recent admission to the U.S. Governors’ Coalition for Energy Security, a group of 12 states that have banded together to cooperate on policies that promote reliable and affordable energy.

Guys who get it: Among Trump’s Cabinet nominees are North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (left) and Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright (right), both known for their vigorous support of oil and natural gas development and free North American trade in energy products. (Sources of photos: (left) Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0; (right) Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Another positive sign is that alongside Trump’s pro-tariff Cabinet picks have come nominations of individuals with a deep understanding of North America’s petroleum sector. Douglas Burgum, a successful software entrepreneur and currently Governor of North Dakota, is slated to become Secretary of the Interior, chairman of the newly created National Energy Council and a member of the U.S. National Security Council. Burgum’s primary mandate is to promote innovation and investment by cutting through the thicket of new restrictions on oil and gas development that President Joe Biden had imposed. Chris Wright, founder of Liberty Energy and an unashamed industry booster, has been nominated to become what one U.S. commentator describes as “the most knowledgable secretary of energy the nation has ever had.” Lee Zeldin, another pro-industry figure, has been tapped to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

The fundamental objective underlying all of Trump’s trade policy is to strengthen American manufacturing. It is something he has articulated since before entering politics in 2015; it can accordingly be regarded as sincere.

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Equally noteworthy is that, in contrast to the widespread and bipartisan clamouring for tariffs on Chinese imports, nobody in the U.S. is demanding that Trump target Canadian energy. Even Bernie Sanders, the avowedly socialist Senator from Vermont who wants a “windfall tax” and higher government royalties imposed on all oil producers, appears indifferent to import tariffs. And while U.S. environmental groups don’t like any free trade in oil and gas, they devote most of their energy to pushing their government towards restrictive European/Canadian-style climate-change policies or a new UN “climate damages tax.” The American fossil fuel sector, meanwhile, is not only in favour of tariff-free trade in energy products – including with Canada – it opposes tariffs on anything.

The evidence to date, however hopeful it may seem, remains inconclusive. Trump prides himself on his unconventional and unpredictable nature. This is what causes America’s adversaries – most notably Communist China – the greatest consternation. Regardless of his previous decisions on trade issues, if Trump thinks imposing tariffs on Canadian energy imports make sense now, he will do so.

“Manufacturing superpower”: The fundamental objective underlying Trump’s trade policy is to reverse the long slide of American industry through decades of globalization – mainly by targeting offshore manufacturing. Shown at top and middle, Trump at campaign event at Dane Manufacturing in Waunakee, Wisconsin, October 2024; at bottom, an assembly line for automobile engines. (Sources of photos: (top and middle) AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall; (bottom) Alliance Employment Services)

Logic and self-interest, however, also point away from such tariffs. The fundamental objective underlying all of Trump’s trade policy is to strengthen American manufacturing. It is something he has articulated since before entering politics in 2015; it can accordingly be regarded as sincere. Trump wants to halt and if possible reverse that sector’s long slide through decades of offshoring and globalization that crippled or wiped out whole industries all over the U.S., especially in the Midwest heartland. These are the places Trump promised to help, this lies at the core of his slogan “Make America Great Again”, and these are many of the people who sent him to the White House the first time and stuck by him through the depths of his ignominy following his second, failed Presidential run. This year, Trump ran on a platform to transform his country back into “it’s my favorite word.”.

To accomplish that dramatic – some would say grandiose if not unachievable – objective, Trump intends to punish countries that use subsidies, favouritism and other policies to unfairly advantage their own industries and flood the U.S. with underpriced goods, harming domestic producers and preventing new ones from starting up. China may be hit with tariffs as high as 60 percent. He will also target imports believed to threaten U.S. national security (such as electric vehicles vulnerable to hacking by foreign enemies) while working to reduce dependence on imports of strategic materials or components critical in wartime. And he wants to close loopholes allowing China to bypass U.S. tariffs by locating production in proxy countries – especially the two countries adjoining the U.S.

Mexico has gone quite far down the road of partnering with Chinese companies, and Trump’s key advisors have warned that Mexico will be held to account for it. Canada is certain to be scrutinized as well, but can probably allay similar U.S. concerns by avoiding becoming a backdoor and way-station for Chinese goods, something Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland already promised last week. This will require several key policy commitments, as well as competent, rigorous enforcement (always a questionable assumption for this Liberal government). It will also be necessary to continue matching U.S. tariff-related moves against China, as Canada did earlier this fall in imposing tariffs on Chinese EVs and aluminum.

Closing the back door: Trump is determined to eliminate loopholes allowing China to bypass U.S. tariffs through “transshipment”, i.e., locating assembly plants in Mexico or Canada. Shown at top, Chinese company setting up facility in northern Mexico; at bottom, transshipment occurring in Texas. (Sources of photos: (top) Kosuke Shimizu/Nikkei; (bottom) T. Hammonds MSW, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

In addition to tariffs, Trump’s critical policies in restoring American manufacturing competitiveness will be reducing taxes, lifting the regulatory burden and, as his campaign platform puts it, ensuring the flow of “Reliable and Abundant Low Cost Energy”. By “energy” one should mainly read “crude oil and natural gas” – something Trump describes over and over as “liquid gold”. (Ending the demonization of coal is also a part; as well there is likely to be a modest revival in nuclear power.) In addition to supporting American industry, cheap energy is intended to help ease inflation and improve the lot of hard-pressed consumers, homeowners and wage-earners.

Among the associated promises and policies Trump has mentioned are to cancel the Biden Administration’s planned pro-electric vehicle policies (similar in effect to Canada’s outright mandate) and its moratorium on new LNG export facilities, end permitting of offshore wind turbines, reopen offshore areas to oil and gas drilling, unlock Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, reopen federal lands to drilling and hydraulic fracturing, pull the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accord (for the second time, in Trump’s case) and otherwise end the Biden-era’s “Green New Deal”, which Trump derides as a “green new scam”.

During his election-night acceptance speech, Trump pointedly told Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his pick to be Secretary of Health and Human Services and formerly a vocal anti-oil activist, to keep his nose completely out of energy issues. Chris Wright, his recently announced nominee to be Secretary of Energy, has written a 180-page paper which contends that “Zero Energy Poverty by 2050 is a better goal than Net Zero 2050.”

Trump’s energy policy includes cancelling President Joe Biden’s moratorium on new liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facilities, reopening offshore areas to oil and gas drilling and unlocking Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve. Shown at left, Trump visits the Cameron LNG liquefaction terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana, 2019; at middle, an oil drilling platform at Green Canyon in the Gulf of Mexico; at right, the National Petroleum Reserve. (Source of right photo: mypubliclands, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Trump’s energy policy, in short, is “drill, baby, drill” – often written in all-caps. Where might Canadian-produced oil and natural gas fit into this picture? Right in the middle, as it turns out – figuratively and literally.

It cannot be said often or loudly enough: inexpensive, reliable and plentiful energy is essential to economic competitiveness, national prosperity and modern civilization. But many Western governments – Canada’s among them – act as if it is optional. Right now, industries in authoritarian China use low-cost coal-fired electricity to produce the pricey solar panels and wind turbines that are exported to Western countries where they produce exorbitantly expensive electricity that in turn renders their domestic industries uncompetitive. Industrial users in Great Britain, for example, currently pay five-and-a-half times as much for electricity as those in the U.S., while German industry pays more than three times as much. Both countries are seeing their industrial base evaporate before their eyes. If Canada remains on its current policy path, it will be next.

Oil and natural gas are critical inputs that make American manufacturers more competitive, reduce the operating costs of nearly any business and allow American consumers to pay less to fuel their vehicles and heat/cool their homes. Canadian oil and natural gas not only do not undermine Trump’s economic and trade policies, they strengthen and advance them.

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Trump is unshakeably determined to avoid that for his country – and this is where Canadian energy enters the picture. Crucially, Canadian fossil fuels are not manufactured goods except in the narrowest technical sense. Unlike cars, smartphones, toys, shoes or furniture, they are commodities rather than finished products. They aren’t produced with unfair subsidies. They don’t contain secret chips enabling the Chinese to spy on U.S. military bases. They don’t threaten to displace or bankrupt age-old American companies, throw thousands of employees out of work or transform once-thriving cities into ghostly husks.

They are the very opposite: critical inputs that, by being priced competitively, make American manufacturers more competitive, reduce the operating costs of nearly any business and allow American consumers to pay less to fuel their vehicles and heat/cool their homes. Canadian oil and natural gas not only do not undermine Trump’s economic and trade policies, they strengthen and advance them.

Integrated system: Western Canada’s producing region supplies the U.S. heartland with crude oil and natural gas, where it can be refined and distributed, meeting the Trump test of (as his campaign platform puts it) “Reliable and Abundant Low Cost Energy”. Shown at top, an oil refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota. (Sources: (photo) Pexels; (map) CAPP)

This beneficial role is accentuated by some geographical quirks. Although North America’s vast interlinked system of energy pipelines is a near-miracle of technology, operating efficiency and reliability, it is not perfect or seamless. Major consuming regions tend to get most of their oil, natural gas and liquids from the nearest producing region; why ship the stuff farther than you must? Consequently, the U.S. Midwest and portions of the “near South” and northeast are heavily supplied from Canada.

If this supply were to be curtailed or disrupted by tariffs or other measures, manufacturers in these dependant regions would suffer immediately as wholesale and consumer prices jumped substantially. Regional oil refineries, gas/liquids facilities and petrochemical plants would pay more for their feedstock, face shortages as Canadian producers “shut in” no-longer-profitable production, and/or would operate below capacity or inefficiently as they sourced sub-optimal feedstock from elsewhere.

Even a 10 percent tariff would raise the average retail gasoline price across the U.S. by 5 percent, according to commodity pricing analysts at Montreal-based BCA Research. But the regional effects would be much greater. Regional prices not only for gasoline and heating fuel, but on any goods related to oil and natural gas, would rise far more than is implied by a mere 10-20 percent import tariff. And keep in mind, much of this region is MAGA country. Over time, some pipelines that currently ship product out of the Midwest might need to be “reversed”, no longer exporting to the Gulf of Mexico and Northeast regions but drawing energy from them. The U.S. might even need to increase imports from geopolitical adversaries like Venezuela or dodgy and corrupt African states.

All of this would be damaging not only to American consumers, business and manufacturing industries, but to U.S. foreign policy and even to the U.S. energy industry itself, the ostensible “competitor” that one might intuitively think stands to benefit from import tariffs. It hardly needs to be said that this would run counter to the new Administration’s objectives.

Despite being dubbed “dirty oil”, “unsustainable” and a “sunset industry”, the energy sector has led America’s productivity gains over the last decade while providing well-paying jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans – including Hispanics, Blacks and American Indians. (Source of bottom photo: Sahara Group)

In addition to its roles in supporting manufacturing and consumers, America’s oil and gas industry is seen by Trump and key members of his nascent Administration as a competitive advantage for the economy as a whole, as a major source of wealth-creation in its own right and as a geopolitical weapon. For this to make sense, one needs to know a few things about this industry. In contrast to its image as “dirty oil”, “unsustainable” or a “sunset industry”, oil and natural gas is among the most technologically advanced, innovative, entrepreneurial and dynamic industries in the economy. This sector led the entire American economy in productivity gains over the previous decade, as the accompanying graph indicates.

The million or more jobs it provides across the continent are by turns technically intricate, dangerous, physically hard, intellectually stimulating – and very lucrative. Just as more and more Canadian First Nations are becoming proponents of natural resource development because they recognize the benefits to themselves, the U.S. industry provides jobs to hundreds of thousands of Hispanics, Blacks and American Indians – an impressive number of whom just voted for Trump.

This is all thanks to one of the most remarkable industrial turnarounds in history: America’s transformation from an insatiable importer of oil and natural gas, its domestic production sagging by the year towards apparent oblivion, its producing sector increasingly demoralized and decrepit, into a country that’s not only energy self-sufficient but has leapfrogged to a net exporter. All in the dizzying time-frame of barely a dozen years, starting in 2008, the year U.S. crude oil production reached its nadir of a mere 5 million barrels per day. (Not long after, just as U.S. oil production was showing sparks of revival, President Barack Obama contemptuously declared that, “Anybody who tells you that we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about, or just isn’t telling you the truth.”)

By last year the average rate had soared to 12.9 million barrels per day which, the U.S. Energy Information Administration recently pointed out, represented “more crude oil than any country, ever.” U.S. production isn’t just higher than Saudi Arabia and Russia’s – it’s nearly 30 percent higher. How this came about is its own story. But suffice it to say that Canadian visionaries and companies played an important role. So, interestingly, did prospective energy secretary Wright and his company, Liberty Energy, which helped pioneer the development of formerly inaccessible shale reservoirs by using horizontally drilled wells completed with multiple hydraulic fractures. In short, this transformation has fundamentally changed the energy game for the U.S., domestically and internationally.

Since its nadir at 5 million barrels per day (mmbpd) in 2008, U.S. crude oil production has soared to an average of 12.9 mmbpd in 2023 – more than any other country in history and trumping Saudi Arabia and Russia. Concurrently, exports of liquefied natural gas have zoomed from zero a decade ago to 12 billion cubic feet per day. (Sources of graphics: (top) eia.gov; (bottom) S&P Global, retrieved from The New York Times)

Here again, imported Canadian energy is neither a competitive threat nor a hindrance – but a source of economic value. The quirks of geography combined with the refusal of successive Canadian governments to ensure that Canada’s oil and natural gas could access global markets have created what amounts to a gargantuan, continent-spanning arbitrage mechanism that enriches American companies, investors and governments. In brief, cheap Canadian crude oil, natural gas and liquids are drawn into the U.S. from the north, enabling domestically produced crude oil, natural gas, liquids, refined fuels and petrochemicals to be exported from the vast Gulf of Mexico energy complex to hungry global markets, where they access premium international prices.

This has become a multi-hundred-billion-dollar opportunity that American entrepreneurs and financiers have exploited with alacrity. Vast investments in LNG export facilities have taken the U.S. from zero LNG as recently as 2014 to approximately 12 billion cubic feet per day this year, a figure forecast to zoom to 20 billion cubic feet per day within two years (the U.S. will thus be exporting more gas than Canada produces in its entirety). U.S. net exports of refined fuels (much more valuable than crude oil) are generating more than US$60 billion annually. The associated processing and export facilities themselves employ thousands.

Trump’s ‘liquid gold’ will soothe American consumers, grease the skids of American manufacturing, fill the financial tanks of American investors and set economic bonfires upon America’s enemies.

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Clearly, the more Canadian oil and natural gas can be imported from the north, the more American energy – including value-added refined/processed products – can flow from the Gulf of Mexico outward to the world. Indeed, Trump himself has said he would like to reinstate the federal permit for the much-fought-over, 800,000-barrel-per-day Keystone XL pipeline, which he approved early in his first term but was then cancelled by Biden.

The stunning U.S. energy turnaround in barely 15 years plus the current prospect of enormous further growth enable Trump and his policymakers to credibly talk about elevating the U.S. to global “energy dominance”. That is to say, an America liberated from dependency on imported oil not only can act unconstrained by the need to placate oil-producing nations that don’t share U.S. interests, but can use its own energy exports to enrich itself and support allied countries. It can also stare down oil-producing adversaries like Iran and Russia, leaving them weaker, contained and less able to fund wars, terrorism and other foreign mischief. Trump’s stated policy to curtail oil production misused by dictatorships in Iran and Venezuela also implies that Canadian energy exports will be more highly sought-after than ever. More Canadian energy strengthens U.S. energy dominance and weakens its enemies by helping to hold down international commodity prices.

Golden opportunity: The Trump Administration’s stated goal of global “energy dominance” appears achievable, weakening its oil-producing adversaries while holding open the door to Canada – if Canada’s political leadership is intelligent enough to seize the moment. Shown, Trump shakes hands with UFC Champion Jon Jones at Madison Square Garden, New York, 11 days after his election victory. (Source of photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The U.S. is already the world’s energy giant. Its goal of “energy dominance” is therefore serious and realistic. Standing atop it all will be Trump, the energy dominator: his “liquid gold” will soothe American consumers, grease the skids of American manufacturing, fill the financial tanks of American investors and set economic bonfires upon America’s enemies. That simply does not sound like an Administration about to place tariffs on the very imports that will help it make this happen. Far more likely, the 47^th President’s energy policy will offer Canada a golden opportunity to play a supportive role as a neighbour, friend, trading partner and ally – and to profit greatly from doing so.

George Koch is Editor-in-Chief of C2C Journal.

Source of main image: heritage.org.

C2C Journal

Net Gain: A Common-Sense Climate Change Policy for Canada

Published on November 16, 2024

Todayville

From the C2C Journal

By Robert Lyman

Most Canadians have come to agree that the federal carbon tax needs to go. But while the rallying cry “Axe the Tax!” has been a deadly partisan tool for Pierre Poilievre, it does not constitute a credible election campaign platform, let alone a coherent environmental policy for a new government. The Conservative Party needs to develop both, writes Robert Lyman. The election this past week of Donald Trump as U.S. President creates an urgency to remake Canada’s climate policy on more realistic, sensible grounds. Drawing upon the pragmatic, economics-driven approach of the Copenhagen Consensus, Lyman proposes a middle path that discards the uncompromising, self-destructive ideology of the Justin Trudeau government while recognizing that most Canadians won’t accept doing nothing.

The Justin Trudeau government has made reducing greenhouse gas emissions the pre-eminent goal of public policy. In 2021 it passed the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, binding present and future governments to a process intended to achieve “net zero” emissions by 2050 and to set incremental five-year emission reduction targets and plans towards that end. Net zero essentially means eliminating almost all the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the consumption of hydrocarbons – crude oil, natural gas and coal – in the Canadian economy, and doing so within 29 years of the new law’s passage.

This presents an immense challenge and is effectively impossible in the intended timeframe. Canadians currently rely on fossil fuels to meet about 73 per cent of their energy needs. These energy sources provide services essential to Canadians’ incomes and wellbeing: secure, reliable and affordable heat, lighting and motive power to move people and goods, as well as the food, medicine and other critical services to sustain them. Without these energy sources, Canadians would all be far poorer, colder, less mobile and less able to compete in the global economy.

Impossible dream: With fossil fuels currently meeting 73 percent of Canada’s overall energy requirements and fulfilling critical needs from heating to medical services, getting to “net zero” emissions anytime soon seems delusional. (Sources of photos: (top two) Pexels; (bottom two) Unsplash)

At least four trends are coming together to make the present policy course untenable:

The Canadian public is becoming far more aware of the financial costs of the emission reduction measures, including especially the impact of “carbon” taxes (technically, taxes on fossil fuel-related emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂)) and higher electricity rates from switching away from lowest-cost generating options. Federal climate-related spending, by the government’s own admission (see page 125 of the pdf version of the linked document), is now in the range of $20 billion per year, while the economic cost of working towards net zero has been credibly estimated at $60 billion per year.
The public – notably young people and seniors – are becoming more aware of the effects of climate-related regulations and taxes on the cost of living, especially the cost of housing, and on employment opportunities.
There is a wide and growing disparity between the promises of politicians to reduce emissions and what is actually happening; no national emissions “target” has ever been met or is likely to be met.
Rapidly growing emissions in many developing countries (especially China and India), which now collectively generate 68 percent of the world’s total, demonstrate that net zero will not be achieved globally. Furthermore, reductions achieved regardless of cost in Canada (which produces approximately 1.5 percent of global emissions) will yield negligible global benefits in terms of temperature or weather.

The Temptation of a Different Kind of “Net Zero” Policy

Based on these trends, it might be argued that Canada should perform an immediate policy U-turn and cancel all federal measures founded upon any claim of impending climate catastrophe. This would give new meaning to the term “Net Zero Policy”: a government whose climate change policy is to have no policy. Enthusiasm for such an approach must, however, be tempered by the recognition that it runs counter to the position held by all the main political actors in Canada, including notably the mainstream media. Policy, like politics, best evolves in the realm of compromise and consensus.

“Axe the Tax” has its limits: Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre (top) has pledged to get rid of the hated consumer carbon tax and eliminate comprehensive electric vehicle mandates, but he’s expected to maintain the pricey “producer” carbon tax on industrial emitters. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Paul Daly; (middle) WSDOT, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0; (bottom) Shutterstock)

Thus, one should consider where might lie a “middle ground” that could garner the support not only of those strongly opposed to all elements of current policy – which can loosely be described as Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre’s core base – but also of moderates, i.e., people who do not doubt the general notion of climate change but who shy away from radical or ruinous policies to deal with it. This disparate category likely includes much of the business community, what used to be called “Red Tories”, some centrist Liberals disaffected with Trudeau and some working-class NDP voters suspicious of that party’s current direction.

Politics at its most basic will require that the Conservatives have something to put in their campaign platform entitled “climate change”, “emissions” or, more broadly, “the environment”. So far, Poilievre has been cobbling together policy ideas seemingly ad hoc. As practically every Canadian knows, he pledges to get rid of the consumer carbon tax – the one everyone pays at the gas pump or on their natural gas heating bill.

Less understood, however, is that Poilievre is widely believed to intend to maintain the “producer” carbon tax on industrial emitters – an equally steep, equally escalating levy that is burdening industry with billions of dollars in additional taxation. Additionally, Poilievre has promised to get rid of some major Liberal-imposed regulations – like the mandate to transition to entirely electric vehicle production by 2035 – but would rely even more heavily on other technocratic regulations at the industrial level.

Some of these policies make sense on their face; some might not make sense at all. What is clear, though, is that the Conservatives do not have a complete climate change and/or environmental policy – at least not one they have shared with the public. Eliminating the consumer carbon tax as an unfairly imposed cost and needless drag on the economy as well as a symbol of climate policy over-reach would be an important and politically popular way to demonstrate a more common-sense approach.

It is not enough, however, and it would leave a new government vulnerable to the accusation that it lacked a coherent and well-considered approach. Attempting to govern without a clearly articulated overall policy on climate would politically damage even a solid majority government; in a minority situation, it could be enough to destabilize the government altogether and prompt an early election.

A Better Way

There is a better way – a middle way between the current ideological approach and a no-policy-policy. It is inspired by the work of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. This ongoing project seeks to establish priorities for advancing global welfare in a range of areas, from battling diseases like malaria to advancing national economic development to addressing climate change, through methodologies based on welfare economics, which centres on cost-benefit analysis.* The Copenhagen Consensus was conceived and launched in the early 2000s by Bjorn Lomborg, the famous Danish environmentalist. In each policy area examined, subject matter experts present potential policy solutions, which are evaluated and ranked by a panel of economists, thus emphasizing rational prioritization through economic analysis.

Of 15 possible policy measures to respond to climate change, the Copenhagen Consensus panel ranked carbon taxes the very worst – something that’s of obvious relevance to Canada. Also of interest in the Canadian context was the experts’ strong endorsement of research into carbon storage.

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In 2009 the Copenhagen Consensus assembled an expert panel to consider the best responses to climate change and rank them as priorities. The panel was asked to answer the question: “If the global community wants to spend up to, say $250 billion per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do most good for the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?”

In the resulting report, the top priorities generally focused on investments in scientific research and technology development and commercialization, while measures to reduce CO₂ emissions using currently available technologies were ranked lower, because these were found to incur high costs in relation to the expected environmental benefits. Of 15 possible policy measures to respond to climate change, the Copenhagen Consensus panel ranked carbon taxes the very worst – something of obvious relevance to Canada. Also of interest in the Canadian context was the experts’ strong endorsement of research into carbon storage (something that Alberta and Saskatchewan are very enthusiastic about), planning for adaptation and the expansion and protection of forests.

A better way: Founded by Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, the Copenhagen Consensus Center uses rational economic analysis to advance global welfare in areas from battling disease to addressing climate change. (Source of left photo: TED Conference, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

The Copenhagen Consensus approach to climate policy presumes that human-induced climate change is occurring and that it probably will have adverse effects, but it contends that other social and environmental issues are more serious threats to humanity and should be addressed as higher priorities. Its careful analyses came to recognize the limitations of currently available technologies in achieving a cost-effective transformation of the global energy system. This is why it advocates prioritizing a significant increase in funding of basic science to accelerate the discovery and commercialization of new emission-reducing technologies. It also places priority on measures taken to adapt to (rather than seek to prevent) potential climate changes and to enhance the overall resiliency of the energy system.

Climate Change Policy Implications for Canada

The Copenhagen Consensus’ cost-benefit-based prioritization of climate change policies is applicable to Canadian policy-making and governance approaches in several important and broad areas, at not only the national but international and inter-provincial levels. What follows is a brief, simplified discussion of the most important aspects, keeping in mind that some of these are large issues in themselves and not resolvable overnight.

Remove the Pressure of Overly Ambitious and Arbitrary Targets

Canada has never met any of the targets set at the international or national levels regarding either the magnitude of emission reductions or the arbitrary dates by which these would be reached. The use of such arbitrary and unrealistic targets should be reduced or avoided. A first step in applying the Copenhagen Consensus’ recognition of the immense difficulty and complexity of achieving an energy transition, along with the need for new technologies whose development does not occur according to a government-controlled timetable, would be for Canada to postpone the “Net-Zero by 2050 goal” to at least 2070 if not 2100.

Adopt a Multi-Goal Framework

Canadian climate policy would henceforth be developed within a multi-goal public policy framework. Rather than making emission reduction the preeminent goal, the federal government would seek to optimize climate policy alongside multiple other public policy objectives including economic prosperity (growth, employment, investment and trade), social harmony, environmental quality, financial responsibility, energy security, defence and promotion of good federal-provincial and international relations, among others.

“Arbitrary targets”: Applying Copenhagen Consensus rational analysis would mean abandoning or postponing Canada’s “Net-Zero by 2050” goal and focusing instead on practical environmental improvement projects. Shown at bottom, the Gold Bar Wastewater Treatment Plant in Edmonton, Alberta. (Sources of photos: (top) JessicaGirvan/Shutterstock; (bottom) Urban Edmonton)

Prioritize the Real Environmental Problems

Despite what one reads and hears in the mainstream media, Canada has very high environmental quality and the areas that need improvement are relatively few. These include solid waste management, sanitation/wastewater treatment and sulphur dioxide emissions per unit of GDP. Most of these are provincial and/or municipal responsibilities, but the federal government can play a role in funding capital investments. Where the federal government has jurisdiction and must regulate, regulatory efforts should focus on addressing tangible environmental problems with practical, cost-beneficial, affordable solutions to further clean up the air, water and soil, and the results should be measured and tracked by comprehensible and publicly available metrics.

Adhere to Technological Realism

A common-sense approach would recognize that energy transitions take a long time. The pace of transition away from fossil fuels must, accordingly, be guided by the rate at which new scientific discoveries can be applied to the development of new products and services and then commercialized to the point of true economic viability. A common-sense policy approach in Canada would abandon the presumption that governments can and should attempt to hasten the technology commercialization process by “picking winners”, granting large subsidies to favoured firms or otherwise trying to centrally plan the changes in the energy economy. Instead, the new approach would entail higher levels of government funding for basic research and development.

The federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan could add about $55,000 to the average cost of a new home built in Canada. A new Canadian climate policy would abandon this plan and leave the establishment of building codes, zoning and construction approvals in the hands of provincial and municipal governments.

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Promote Energy Security and Reliability

A new Canadian climate policy would repeal or substantially amend the Clean Electricity Regulations that mandate the elimination of hydrocarbon-based electricity generation by 2035, a goal that this recent study concludes is completely unfeasible. It would also require that future federal or provincial regulation of GHG emissions be based upon a systematic review of the potential impacts on the viability and competitiveness of Canadian industry. Finally, it would eliminate the impending federal cap on oil and natural gas industry emissions (which was unveiled on November 4 and imposes a 35-percent rollback in GHG emissions by 2030) and take other measures to ensure that Canada, which has the world’s third-largest crude oil reserves as well as world-scale natural gas reserves, can continue to increase energy production to meet the needs of domestic and export markets.

The steep cost of compliance: The Justin Trudeau government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan will add an estimated $55,000 to the average price of a new home, pointing to the need to eliminate costly and pointless regulation. (Source of photo: pnwra, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Reduce Housing Costs

According to the Fraser Institute, the federal government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan could add about $55,000 to the average cost of a new home built in Canada. Even more stringent and costly regulations would undoubtedly follow after 2030 to meet the net zero target. A new Canadian climate policy would abandon this plan and leave the establishment of building codes, zoning and construction approvals in the hands of provincial and municipal governments. This would contribute meaningfully to addressing Canada’s housing affordability crisis.

Legislate Wisely

A new policy would include amending or repealing the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act. The entire law is a litigation “trigger” because it gives climate activist organizations weapons that they can use to engage in “lawfare” – the strategic use of legal proceedings to hinder, intimidate or delay an opponent.

Depoliticize the Regulation of Energy Infrastructure Projects

A new policy would return the regulation of energy infrastructure and rate-making to one that takes place at arm’s length from government political and policy direction. This would require changes to the federal minister’s control of the Canadian Energy Regulator. It would also be highly desirable to reform the system of environmental assessment and review by placing strict time limits on the duration of infrastructure project reviews. Today, regulatory reviews of major energy projects often take five years or longer to complete, and some have taken over 10 years.

The federal Impact Assessment Act (having last year been found largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada) would be substantially amended so that the resulting federal law returns to being a review of the national environmental impacts (and any local impacts as these pertain to areas of clearly federal jurisdiction) rather than an exercise in jurisdictional duplication and an assessment of consequences for the entire planet.

A common-sense climate change policy would also streamline, limit the scope of and quicken the currently often 10-year-long environmental assessment process. Shown, the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, B.C. under construction, January 2024. (Source of screenshot: Northcoast Drone/YouTube)

The principle of “whoever hears the evidence should decide” would be brought back into the law, with an appeal to the courts on a question of law only and an appeal to the federal Cabinet on a question of policy. This is how the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has worked for several decades.

The arbitrary and harmful bans on oil tanker traffic on the Pacific Coast and on new hydrocarbon exploration and development in Canada’s Far North would be removed.

Promote Federal-Provincial Harmony

In the pre-2000 period, federal climate policy explicitly recognized that measures should not entail undue costs and burdens on any region or province. This went out the window in the Trudeau era and became a leading cause of federal-provincial discord. A new policy would re-institute this as a cardinal principle. Among other things, it would also be essential to ensure that there was ample coordination and consultation with all affected provinces before any new international commitments were made.

Focus on harmony: To promote more efficient cross-border trade, Canada’s regulatory standards should align with those of the U.S. The incoming Donald Trump Administration is likely to discard electric vehicle mandates and “clean” fuel standards, policy shifts that will affect Canada. (Sources of photos: (top) AP Photo/Evan Vucc; (bottom) Sundry Photography/Shutterstock)

Harmonize Canadian and United States Regulatory Regimes

It would be recognized that to facilitate more seamless cross-border trade with Canada’s largest trading partner, the United States requires that regulatory standards and codes developed in Canada, especially involving the regulation of fuel efficiency/emissions intensity of vehicles and appliances, be closely aligned with U.S. federal standards. It is widely expected that the incoming Trump Administration will discard electric vehicle mandates and “clean” fuel standards, policy shifts that clearly will affect Canada. Although this is not to suggest that Canada allow its policies to be dictated by the U.S., close attention should be paid.

Facilitate Truly Responsible Investing

Canada has committed to adopting the new Sustainability Disclosure Standard under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which imposes mandatory sustainability-related disclosure and climate-related financial disclosure. These and similar regulatory initiatives are increasing the burden on Canadian firms to report not only their own estimates of GHG emissions but also to try to guess those of their suppliers and customers. This is absurd on its face and creates another trigger for endless litigation when such guesses turn out wrong, prompting accusations of fraud. A new Canadian climate policy would severely restrict the use of such accounting measures.

Fairly soon, the current Official Opposition is likely to take on the responsibility of actually governing. To respond effectively to the economic and political threats posed by climate catastrophism, advocates of policy change must go beyond merely targeting individual policies for cancellation based on complaints about the harm they do.

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Build Adaptation and Resilience

A new Canadian climate policy would place greatly increased, perhaps primary, emphasis on measures to increase the resilience of Canadian infrastructure and economy to future climate changes. Adaptation measures can avoid or reduce adverse future impacts by, for example, changing human behaviour in advance, such as land use rules that prohibit construction of buildings in flood-prone areas, or by taking actions to protect valued resources, communities and landscapes. Many adaptation measures also increase resilience towards climatic variability such as droughts and storms, making them potentially attractive policies even in the absence of long-term human-induced changes. They can pay dividends to society even if all the concerns about climate change turn out to be greatly exaggerated.

A new climate change policy should include measures to increase the resilience of Canadian infrastructure and the economy to future climate changes. Shown, (at top) a storm in coastal Nova Scotia; (at bottom) flooding in B.C.’s Lower Mainland. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan; (bottom) The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

Who Might Implement the Copenhagen Consensus in Canada?

It is clear that the Trudeau government is incapable of such a significant policy reform as summarized above. It is at least conceivable that, were Trudeau to be replaced before the next election, his successor might consider some of these measures; conceivable, but not likely. Most probably, the task of implementing such broad policy changes would fall to a new Conservative federal government. The party’s promises to “Axe the Tax” correctly address the mounting public concern about the impact of carbon taxes on the cost of living and competitiveness of Canadian business, as well as the unfairness with which they have been applied.

Fairly soon, however, the current Official Opposition is likely to take on the responsibility of actually governing. To respond effectively to the economic and political threats posed by climate catastrophism, advocates of policy change must go beyond merely targeting individual policies for cancellation based on complaints about the harm they do. They must think through what a realistic, credible, politically palatable – and cost-effective – climate policy framework would look like. The time to start is now.

*Cost-benefit analysis is a tool economists use to compare the estimated costs and benefits (or opportunities) associated with a proposed undertaking. It involves tallying up all the current and projected long-term costs and benefits, estimating the financial equivalent of those for which dollar equivalents are not available, and converting everything into present-value terms using discount rates. If the costs outweigh the benefits, then the decision-makers should rethink whether to proceed.

Robert Lyman is a retired energy economist who served for 25 years as a policy advisor and manager on energy, environment and transportation policy in the Government of Canada.

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The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary: How to Read Between the Lies

From the C2C Journal

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

—Alice Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

The power of words: As Holocaust survivor Victor Klemperer described in his book The Language of the Third Reich, the endless repetition of Nazi slogans and idioms about race and duty turned the German people into unthinking automatons in service to Adolf Hitler’s fascist regime.

Child Care Deserts

A self-inflicted “desert”: The dire shortage of childcare spaces across Canada is largely the result of federal policies that forbid or curtail the participation of for-profit centres in Ottawa’s $10 per day child care program. (Sources of photo: Global News)

Denialism

Environmental Racism

Cheap room for rent: As 19th century British economist David Ricardo (left) first explained, the price of land is determined by its most productive use, which is why low-income families tend to live in less desirable – and less expensive – neighbourhoods. (Source of right photo: Shutterstock)

Equity

Excessive Net Profits

Villainizing the retailer: A recent House of Commons subcommittee blamed food inflation on the “excessive net profits” of food stores. In fact, grocery retailer Loblaws’ profit margin is a measly 3.4 percent. (Source of photo: BlogTO)

Financialization

The boogeyman of the housing industry: According to the Office of the Federal Housing Advocate, “financialization” is to blame for Canada’s current housing crisis, and the solution is to eliminate entrepreneurs and profit from the entire sector. (Source of photo: Colin N. Perkel/Shutterstock)

Living Wage

Organizational Elder Abuse

Inventing abuse: The recent sale of a seniors’ home in Winnipeg was declared “organizational elder abuse” by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, reflecting the left-wing view that making a profit while delivering care is somehow illegal or immoral. (Source of photo: Josh Crabb/CBC)

Renoviction/Demoviction

Responsible Investing/Sustainable Investing/Impact Investing

Stakeholder Capitalism

Conclusion

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Why the Trump Administration is Unlikely to Impose Import Tariffs on Canadian Oil and Natural Gas

From the C2C Journal

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Net Gain: A Common-Sense Climate Change Policy for Canada

From the C2C Journal

Impossible dream: With fossil fuels currently meeting 73 percent of Canada’s overall energy requirements and fulfilling critical needs from heating to medical services, getting to “net zero” emissions anytime soon seems delusional. (Sources of photos: (top two) Pexels; (bottom two) Unsplash)

A better way: Founded by Danish environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg, the Copenhagen Consensus Center uses rational economic analysis to advance global welfare in areas from battling disease to addressing climate change. (Source of left photo: TED Conference, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)

The steep cost of compliance: The Justin Trudeau government’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan will add an estimated $55,000 to the average price of a new home, pointing to the need to eliminate costly and pointless regulation. (Source of photo: pnwra, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

A common-sense climate change policy would also streamline, limit the scope of and quicken the currently often 10-year-long environmental assessment process. Shown, the LNG Canada project in Kitimat, B.C. under construction, January 2024. (Source of screenshot: Northcoast Drone/YouTube)

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