Canada is increasingly a country of energy pessimists and energy optimists, where the nation’s economic foundation of oil & gas has become the ideological battleground for much bigger issues. Those who believe that energy supplied by Canada is a beneficial contribution to the global economy are pitted against others carrying out a moral crusade, ostensibly in the name of climate, that necessitates the harassment of corporate sinners through demarketing, delegitimizing and [Read more]
Column: Welcome to Canada, Greta Thunberg
As the most ubiquitous Swedish product since IKEA’s Billy bookcase, the fact that Greta Thunberg’s climate symphony in the key of apocalypse has arrived in Alberta should not have come as a surprise. Some say she’s packing more hypocrisy than you could fit in a Vardegan. (That’s a measuring cup in Ikean, in case you’re wondering.) Is that too harsh a judgment? Yes it is. If every kid her age had a pinky’s worth of her desire to make the world a better place, there’s a very good chance the [Read more]
Remember that time Canada almost had an energy policy?
I was there the time Canada almost got an energy policy. It was July 2015. Provincial and territorial energy and mining ministers were gathered in Halifax for their annual ministerial. By tradition, the objective of this type of gathering within the federation is to show Ottawa a unified front on issues as a way to challenge the federal government’s tendency to balkanize its unruly junior members. It’s almost built to fail, with control-freak federal civil servants mostly holding the [Read more]
$2 million gift proves again that “dark money” is mostly on the anti-development side
Eyebrows were raised this week when an American group gave $2 million US plus unspecified “expert resources” to Tzeporah Berman, the Vancouver-based campaigner who has made a lucrative career out of working with her U.S.-based advisors to kneecap the Canadian resource economy. Berman’s latest assignment, according to the American group channeling the money to Berman, is to “engineer a large reduction in new oil and gas development that will ensure huge amounts of carbon stay un-combusted and [Read more]
Column: Canada’s dependence on imported fossil fuels reaches a whole new level
It’s already well known that eastern Canada has been using a lot of hard-earned foreign exchange to buy crude oil from faraway places like Saudi Arabia, instead of sourcing it from parts of our own country where it is abundant. Lack of in-country pipelines to facilitate this internal trade is a big part of the situation. In 2018 alone, according to detailed information I recently requested from Statistics Canada, the value of crude oil imported into the country was nearly $20 billion. [Read more]
Column: Canadians have every reason to be calm and confident about how the energy future is unfolding
Finding a politically acceptable middle-ground between reducing emissions and growing the economy is difficult, particularly for an energy-producing country like Canada. Discord on related issues is certain to be a significant factor in the upcoming federal election. Anti-fossil fuel activists, not satisfied with their uneven success in setting Canadians’ hair on fire, have now announced they are importing the ideas of the Extinction Rebellion from the United Kingdom. The Extinction [Read more]
CEOs take an acceptable risk airing their energy views
Three Canadian energy companies took out full-page ads in 30 newspapers across the country on Thursday, asking voters to "join us in urging Canada’s leaders of all political stripes to help our country thrive by supporting an innovative energy industry.” It was a bold move for the companies – Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus and MEG Energy – ahead of the October federal election. Ordinarily, sending messages that stray into the political domain would be left to their trade associations. [Read more]
Column: After voting to sue fuel companies for their role in climate change, local officials signed off on a jet-fuel pipeline project that will create decades of emissions. Awkward?
Only a small number of municipalities in British Columbia have caved in to lobbying efforts by West Coast Environmental Law to join speculative class-action lawsuits against oil and gas companies for the stated intention of recovering the cost of local climate mitigation efforts. The absurdity of pointing the finger at those who supply fuels, while overlooking the fact that 80 per cent of the climate impact of fossil fuels comes from consumers, is self-evident to many. So, it's not surprising [Read more]