I haven’t had hate mail in ages. Social media is the safest way to get a fix, it takes mere seconds, but over here it takes more work. That title above oughta do it.
But I’m not kidding. Had the 2024 US election gone the other way, the chance that Canada would be pointed in the direction it is now is virtually zero. We are, ironically, heading down a much stronger path because we have been forced to deal with…all that. To acknowledge that point isn’t to condone everything we see and hear, but the fact does remain. The subtlety there may be lost on those about to hurl pots of boiling oil, but ah whatever, what’s life without a little danger.
Less than two years ago, here in Canada we were in a new era, sort of, same political party but different leadership, that initially appeared not much different than the one Canada had grown exhausted with. We had a new leader that wrote en book about the climate crisis, how ‘every financial decision had to be viewed through a climate lens’, and he called the book (presumably his) Value(s). He kickstarted GFANZ, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, to unite the world’s largest financial institutions with the goal of eliminating hydrocarbons from the value chain by starving the players of financing and insurance options. He looked set to carry on the work of his predecessor, who had systematically gone after that hydrocarbon sector, but in a smoother more bank-y way.
We are in full reverse now, apparently. I will admit I have had my doubts over the past year as to whether Canada was actually embracing resource development, or not. Talk is cheap, and so is setting up a ‘major projects office’. There is probably nothing easier on earth than for a government to set up a new department, the creation of which has the capacity to instil in a bureaucrat the same feeling that would have swept through Van Gogh upon completion of The Starry Night.
For half of 2026, unease continued to grow, because little tangible was happening. Government hardly sat at all, and so little actual legislation was passed. We heard a lot of slogans and pep talks about a totally newfound seriousness, but not much in the way of actual shovels in the ground.
One of the reasons that no shovels were moving was because it was clear even to them that the environment had to change in order for anyone to want to pick one up and start digging for a new project was tangible evidence of change. What were the value(s) standing behind this change? Was it real? Or a rug pull. Capital don’t like rug pulls. Capital stays home.
The Great Canadian investment conference, Canada Investment Summit 2026, might just have been another arm waving exercise, and who would frankly expect otherwise, because we have developed quite a legacy of getting nothing done.
Here is how big the problem was, how bad Canada’s reputation was abroad. Mark Carney appointed a guy named Dominic Barton to lead the charge to attract capital investment to Canada. Critics dismissed him as a Liberal power broker, and that may or may not be true; I may have cared at one point but no longer do because of this: In a recent interview with CBC, Barton documented an actual conversation with Chinese officials. Barton told of an incident where he was working in China to attract that country as a customer for Canada’s LNG. Barton touted a vision to the Chinese officials whereby Canada would provide up to 15 percent of China’s LNG requirements. Per Barton, the Chinese officials were “actually quite excited” at the idea, but told Barton that they couldn’t see it happening because it was too difficult to build things in Canada. To add insult to injury, the Chinese even adopted a cowboy-themed insult: they told Barton that Canada was “all hat and no cattle.”
Ouch, that hurts. But true. And the fact that Carney’s point man has absorbed this fact so well is a good sign.
But then an even better sign arrived this week, when the federal government announced the Productivity Mega Deduction, which, again to ignite the masses, is a title that could have originated on Truth Social. But who cares; it is quite the policy. For the oil and gas sector, it is downright shocking, at least in comparison with any other federal policy over the past decade.
There are no warning shots to oil and gas. None! It’s incredible to read without wincing. The policy actually goes the other way, making all development expenditures – previously 30% per year write-off – as 100 percent write off in the first year. A few years back, the Trudeau government rolled back anything that could be remotely construed even by insane people as a “fossil fuel subsidy”, and now this policy piles them right back on again. With no footnoted O&G animosity.
The whole policy casts in concrete a series of tax deduction enhancements squarely aimed at sources of capital, saying quite clearly, “You are once again welcome.” I have many reservations about the direction our country is heading in internationally (tied to the EU, and their disastrous economic policies? Ugh, no thanks), but it is hard to call this tax deduction package anything but a winner.
For Carney to roll out something like this, given his words and actions over the past decade, means that something truly cataclysmic has happened to cause such a re-valu(ation). And that something is President Donald J. Trump.
There is no escaping that fact. Canada was on a self-destructive path, following the likes of Germany and California into self-flagellation and cutting. The only thing that would have stopped that train, independent of Trump, would have been to stare into the abyss of total economic ruin. Only under such circumstances would the forces of destruction been so evident to all that we would have actually voted in someone to do something about it.
This time around, we actually didn’t vote someone in to do something about it. We voted someone in (we as in Canada collectively) to work out a new deal with the US. As it turns out, that project was apparently burned to the ground, which is not good news in any way, but the silver lining is that it became an absolute economic necessity for Canada to pivot to drastic action such as this Productivity plan. There are many inner hurdles to overcome yet, and our flirting with certain foreign governments may come back to bite us hard yet, but let’s just bask in this good news this week: capital might yet return to Canada in meaningful amounts.
Through the power of Trump, Carney is pushing through policies that would have been battery acid in the eyes of the last decade’s government and supporters. How they rationalize their current support for this stuff is beyond me, but whatever. I’m just enjoying the view for this week.
At the peak of the energy wars, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity challenged the narrative of imminent fossil fuel demise, facing into the storm. Read the energy story for those that don’t live in the energy world, but want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.
Email Terry here. (His personal energy site, Public Energy Number One, is on hiatus until there are more hours in the day.)