by Bob Weber

The year 1539 was a good one to be King of England.

Henry VIII, the reigning monarch, had a free hand on royal marriages, state religion, church property, and such. But those pesky Parliamentarians didn’t always move as quickly or as agreeably as he would have liked.

So he had his fixer Thomas Cromwell come up with the Statute of Proclamations, which gave Henry the power, exercised through decree, to alter any law, with those decrees having the same force as if Parliament had voted for them.

It was not popular with the commoners. The Act was repealed in 1547 and history’s verdict has been harsh. One 18th-century jurist said it “was calculated to introduce the most despotic tyranny,” and it is still considered the height of Henry’s will to power.

But legislation giving the whip hand to the executive branch of government, which scholars call King Henry the Eighth clauses, is still around. One such clause is prominent in the Carney government’s new Building Canada Act (BCA). It’s a major reason observers say the legislation marks a big shift in power to the prime minister and cabinet and away from the courts, Parliament—and the public.

“Cabinet, with cabinet secrecy, can pass a regulation that changes a law duly passed by Parliament,” Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary resource law professor who testified before a Senate committee on the bill, told The Energy Mix in an interview. “That’s really radical.”

The Building Canada Act was hustled through Parliament last summer in less than a month. It was presented as a response to the perceived need to speed up environmental approvals for large industrial developments, responding in turn to the undoubted threats to the Canadian economy posed by the current United States government. Here, briefly, is how it works.

Project proponents who feel their idea is “nation-building” can apply to the Major Projects Office, a new agency created by the legislation. That office measures the proposal against five goals, including “whether a project will contribute to clean growth and addressing climate change,” according to the recent federal budget.

The office is to ensure both First Nations and provincial governments have been adequately consulted. It then makes a recommendation to the minister of internal trade. After 30 days to ensure the provinces and territories are onside, the minister can then declare the proposal a Project of National Interest, (PONI). Dawn Farrell, CEO of the Major Projects Office, told a House committee she hopes a decision on designation will take four or five months. The discussion will then change from whether to proceed, to how.

Who Wouldn’t Want a PONI?

Supporters say the legislation eliminates the need for companies to answer questions twice, once at an environmental assessment and again when they request permits from federal departments for specific actions—say, building a stream crossing.

“Half the job is getting through environmental assessment, getting your capital together, and announcing the project,” said Dave Nikolejsin, an adviser at the McCarthy Tétrault law firm and the former provincial deputy minister who oversaw natural gas development in British Columbia. “The other half, and sometimes the tougher half, is actually getting it built.”

Speaking on a podcast by the ARC Energy Research Institute, Nikolejsin said “What drives proponents crazy is they will go through massive expense and time to do a baseline study as part of an environmental assessment. Then they have to do it again when they turn to get their permits.”

A blog from the law firm Bennett Jones, which often represents fossil energy companies, made a similar point: “By cutting red tape and coordinating project approvals more efficiently, the MPO represents a significant effort by the federal government toward ensuring that Canadian infrastructure can be advanced to attract investors and boost the competitiveness of Canada’s project execution timing.”

Stacking the Deck

Well and good. Environmental groups and concerned citizens aren’t any keener than businesses to spend time and money in court or endless regulatory hearings. But observers suggest the Building Canada Act has stacked the deck, dealing aces to those in power and jokers to everyone else.

“Parliament has given cabinet really unprecedented power to exempt projects from environmental laws, in effect giving cabinet what are effectively law-making powers,” Anna Johnston, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, told The Mix.

Pierre-Alain Bujold of the Privy Council Office disputed this characterization in an email to The Mix. “Designation under the Act does not exempt projects from federal laws listed,” he wrote. “It provides upfront clarity and coordination, allowing projects to advance while maintaining protections for the environment and Indigenous rights, with reviews occurring simultaneously rather than consecutively”

“Once reviews are complete, the Minister responsible for the Act (the Minister of One Canadian Economy) issues a single, binding set of public conditions for the project, including mitigation measures.”

Still, questions begin with how PONIs are designated. Most projects won’t be.

Only a small minority of resource projects in Canada trigger a federal assessment. For those that might, Ottawa’s five criteria to determine which ones go through the magic gate are extremely broad. They ask if the project will improve Canada’s autonomy and security, if it will bring economic “or other” benefits, the likelihood of success, impact on First Nations, and environmental and climate effects. Opponents say they are so woolly that—except on the issue of First Nations rights—it would be extremely hard to challenge a project designation in court.

“The act was designed to give huge discretion to federal cabinet,” said Johnston. “It has such broad discretionary powers that I think the possibility of successful legal challenge would be difficult.”

An Environmental Assessment. Sort Of.

A designated PONI would still be subject to an environmental assessment. Sort of.

Before the Act, proponents were required to go through a six-month planning period before beginning their assessment. “That was an avenue for public input,” Johnston said. “That was where we were going to figure out what questions we were going to ask.”

Now, that’s gone, she said. “If you’re a PONI, you have to go through an impact assessment, but you start at the assessment phase, you don’t start at the planning phase.”

The planning period did sometimes spawn the kind of litigation that created crazy-making delays, but Olszynski told The Mix that dropping it shifts power significantly. “Removing that six-month planning period puts the responsibility for setting the terms of reference exclusively in the hands of the proponent.”

Government documents don’t address how reviews will be designed. They only stipulate they will occur. “Projects will continue to be subject to all regulatory review processes that would ordinarily apply to the project.”

The BCA hobbles environmental assessment and public involvement in other ways. Project proponents have been required by law to evaluate their proposals through certain lenses—consideration of cumulative effects, for example. Whether those lenses have been donned are often at the heart of legal disputes.

But PONI projects are “deemed” to have already met such requirements—even if we don’t know whether they have or not. And once something is deemed, it’s done, immune from judicial review.

“If we have any semblance of environmental law in this country, it’s because the courts have pushed that,” Olszynski said. “The fact they are being squeezed out of this space is not good.”

And if regulations are violated, thanks to our old friend King Henry, cabinet can simply alter them. “Cabinet can make a regulation exempting a project from any of the environmental laws,” said Johnston. Hearings may still be held, but the outcome is predetermined.

“It’s just a question of how, not whether,” said Olszynski.

Still, King Henry has his supporters. Nikolejsin sees the mechanism of deemed approval as “something huge (the BCA) has going for it.” As he sees it, that’s the scrubber which will scour away duplication and delay: “If you get through enough gates, whatever that’s going to look like, everything else is supposed to become about expediting things like permits.”

There are still some checks. Safety regulations from the Canadian Energy Regulator and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission aren’t subject to alteration. The BCA requires provincial consent for projects that concern exclusive provincial jurisdiction. And cabinet can remove a project’s PONI designation if, say, it’s deemed to ask for too much deeming.

Is This Legal?

You may ask yourself: is any of this legal? Well, maybe. Neither the Constitution nor common law guarantees public input into regulatory matters.

Or maybe not. Johnston said health and safety issues could provide grounds for constitutional challenges. As well, previous court rulings have found the government must consider all relevant information in regulatory decisions, something the BCA may inhibit.

“Even if the government went in and changed the regulations, that wouldn’t change the court rulings,” she said. “We’re in a legal grey area.”

The Quebec Environmental Law Centre is challenging the BCA in Quebec Superior Court. “The Act allows an excessive encroachment on provincial powers and delegates too much power to the federal government such that the population and the courts lose their ability to effectively control government decisions,” lawyer Marc Bishai told The Mix.

He said that while the BCA requires Ottawa to consult with provinces, that doesn’t mean provincial concerns will be heeded. “Consultation is one thing, but it can be set aside.” The Act also allows provinces to delegate powers to the federal government, something the Constitution forbids, he added.

Finally, he argues King Henry VIII has no place in a modern democracy. “By removing the levers that usually exist to control government decisions, this Act puts at risk the ability of courts to effectively verify whether those government decisions are legal,” he said. “That power of judicial review is protected by the Constitution. The ability of Parliament to reduce or set aside that role of the courts is limited.”

Of course, it’s early days for the BCA. So far, the government has only referred proposals to the Major Projects Office for PONI consideration, 11 of them at last count. As yet, there are no actual PONIs in the stable and no one knows what the process will actually look like. Farrell told the House committee that she expects no more than one or two projects will become PONIs. Still, she added that her office has received 500 applications and the Globe and Mail reported there are 32 projects on the potential list—a reminder that, with a law that hands such open-ended power to cabinet, anything could happen.

“How it’s going to be implemented fundamentally depends on who’s in power,” said Olszynski. “You could do radical things with this bill, if a government wanted to.”

Somewhere, King Henry is smiling.

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By Chris Bonasia

Canada should build a million affordable homes for low- and middle-income households in a “nation-building” project that devotes 1 per cent of the country’s GDP to non-market housing, while setting a high green standard for new construction under the new Build Canada Homes program, according to two separate advocacy pushes released last week.

“If the Canadian government can commit 5 per cent of GDP to the military to appease the U.S. president, surely our federal government should be open to committing 1 per cent of GDP to directly benefit millions of Canadians for decades to come,” a coalition of private developers, non-profit housing providers, and community sector leaders declared in a five-page letter to Housing Minister Gregor Robertson, coordinated by the Alliance for a Liveable Ontario (ALO)`.

The government could hit the target of a million affordable homes by embedding non-market community housing in all new developments, creating purpose-built non-market developments, and motivating philanthropies to invest in affordable housing, the signatories said in a release.

“We wholeheartedly support the federal government stepping in to spur much-needed affordable housing construction,” a group of 111 businesses, tradespeople, and climate organizations said [pdf] in an open letter to Robertson and Prime Minister Mark Carney released by Stand.earth.

But “we would like to see these new homes use the most modern technologies for heating and cooling air and water,” they added. “Rather than building these homes with antiquated oil or gas heating, residents of Canada would greatly benefit from homes that come equipped with high-efficiency electric heat pumps or other low-carbon alternatives like high-efficiency direct electric or geothermal district heating.”

The ALO letter said about three million Canadian households need homes that cost less than $1,000 per month, yet a recent report found the country has only about 600,000 non-market units—3.5 per cent of the residential building stock, compared to an average of 7 per cent across the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). “A nation-building project that focuses on creating homes that are affordable to low- and middle-income Canadians will have huge positive benefits to Canada’s economy and help millions of Canadians who are victims of the housing crisis,” the letter stated.

Alliance Coordinator Franz Hartmann said he hoped Carney and Robertson would see the million-homes plan as a way to build Canada strong while maintaining jobs in the construction industry.

“It would ensure jobs, and most important, it would create the housing we need,” he told The Energy Mix last week. “The biggest, highest-priority need is for affordable housing,” and after a 30+-year experiment of trying to get the private sector to step up, “that’s frankly only going to come from non-market housing.”

As a starting point, he said Ottawa should buy up the current inventory of unsold condominium units and hand them over to be rented out as affordable apartments. “They would show up as an asset on the federal balance sheet, and they would say to non-profit housing providers, ‘you’re running these. They’re essentially controlled by you, and you keep the rents affordable.’” The move would help private developers reduce their stock of unsold condos, even if they didn’t sell at previous market rates.

Hartmann said the private developers who signed the ALO letter “understand the need to get affordable housing built, and that the actions we’ve proposed are the ones that are going to get us there.” But they also see a sound business case in a plan that creates reliable demand for 15 to 20 per cent of the units in any new development they build.

“What’s in it for them is that there’s demand for their services,” he explained.

He said the Alliance deliberately steered clear of any explicit argument for energy-efficient or zero-carbon new housing. “We’re setting the table for those discussions to happen,” he told The Mix. “All of these discussions about creating carbon-neutral buildings are academic unless there’s money in the [federal] budget to build this stuff.”

In the Stand.earth release, climate campaigner Lana Goldberg said a low-carbon standard for Build Canada Homes projects would be a matter of consistency.

“What the government does with the left hand should be consistent with what it’s trying to do with the right hand,” she said. “Yes, we desperately need to build new affordable homes. We’ve also made commitments to tackle the climate crisis. Fortunately we can do both at the same time, but only if the federal government can act as a coherent unit.”

[The Alliance for a Liveable Ontario is an initiative of the Small Change Fund, as is Energy Mix Productions’ Climate News for Climate Solutions project.]

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By Mitchell Beer

The global oil industry is facing down a “flashing red warning light” and firing thousands of workers as analysts project several years of low prices, just as the government of Prime Minister Mark Carney debates whether or when to designate a new oil pipeline as a priority project of “national interest”.

“The world’s biggest oil and gas companies are cutting jobs, slashing costs, and scaling back investments at the fastest pace since the coronavirus market collapse,” the Financial Times reports. “Spending plans have been reined in, with some projects paused or put up for sale as groups seek to balance the books.”

That news landed with Canadian media reporting that a new oil pipeline will not be included in the hotly-anticipated first list of national interest projects the federal government was due to release Thursday, September 11, notwithstanding a tentative list published by the Globe and Mail last week.

However, “behind the scenes, a Liberal source insisted that the absence of a pipeline on the initial list does not mean that one will never happen,” CBC reports, citing interviews gathered by Radio-Canada. “Approval of a natural gas pipeline project is also not out of the question.”

When the PM and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith discussed the matter over the summer, “Carney was clear: the involvement of a private developer is essential for a project to move forward,” CBC writes. “So far, no company has expressed interest in financing or carrying out such a project.”

But Smith is still pushing Carney to rescind the federal Impact Assessment Act and cap on oil and gas emissions, both enacted by the previous government led by then-PM Justin Trudeau, The Canadian Press says. She’s claiming those regulatory factors are the only thing holding back investment.

And yet, the impact of weak oil prices is affecting projects across the globe. The impact is falling most obviously on the U.S. shale industry, where the Times reported last week that colossal fossil ConocoPhillips was cutting one-quarter of its work force. That dispatch attributed the price drop to the decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+) to increase production, combined with “soaring production costs” brought on by Donald Trump’s tariffs on steel and other inputs.

But “this isn’t just a Conoco problem,” Kirk Edwards, president and CEO of Odessa, Texas-based Latigo Petroleum, told the Times. “It’s a flashing red warning light for the entire U.S. oil and gas industry.”

Crude oil prices are down by half from their peak during Vladimir Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and “an OPEC+ decision at the weekend to continue boosting output, despite forecasts of a looming supply glut, will add to the price pressure.” the Times adds. At a price below US$60 per barrel—the threshold that analysts at Wood Mackenzie are projecting through the next few years—”none of the big western oil companies can cover their investment plans and the dividends and buybacks that investors expect.” Their borrowing, meanwhile, has been creeping up, with some companies taking on new debt to pay off their shareholders.

And it’s not just the U.S. or North American industry.

“Even the largest state-run energy companies have not been immune, with Saudi Aramco selling a $10-billion stake in a pipeline network to raise cash and Petronas of Malaysia cutting 5,000 jobs from its work force,” the Times writes. WoodMac expects capital investment in oil and gas production to fall 4.3% this year, its first drop since 2020, though it will still come in at $341.9 billion.

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By Steve Lafleur

Donald Trump’s re-election as president of the United States has left our entire country in a state of flux. His tariffs on key Canadian exports have already resulted in people losing their jobs and businesses scrambling to find new markets. Entire industries are in doubt. The only certainty, as Prime Minister Mark Carney has said, is that the “old relationship we had with the United States, based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operation, is over.”

While this doesn’t mean we need to throw out one of the world’s most productive trade relationships, we need to be able to succeed as a country independent of U.S. public policy. We have no idea what Trump’s plans are from one day to the next, so we must be prepared for a more uncertain future.

Canada at a crossroads

Given the deterioration not only in our trade relationship, but also in our security environment, we need to do big things — fast. Could a stronger role for Canadian industrial policy be part of the answer?

The Institute for Research on Public Policy consulted hundreds of people from academia, business, government, industry groups and non-profits as part of a multi-year research project on Canada’s future economic choices. A final report is to be released at a conference on Sept. 16 in Ottawa.

The institute ran four workshops, guided by a group of experts, across the country. During those conversations we heard potential ways industrial policy could be applied, as well as divided opinions about how much — if anything — governments ought to do to support or reshape parts of the economy.

To some, a more robust industrial policy represented an opportunity for Canada to play a leadership role in future industries. To others, it sounded like heavy-handed government intervention. There was considerable openness to using targeted government actions to address some public priorities that financial markets have little incentive to address, for example, ensuring that Canada has the domestic capacity to manufacture vaccines.

Industrial policy is a loaded term. It means many things to many people. Most broadly it means governments actively attempting to steer a portion of economic activity. That can range from small things like tax credits to bigger plans to promote a particular sector or region.

An IRPP event | Canada’s Next Economic Transformation: Industrial Policy in Tumultuous Times

Some would argue that industrial policy is a form of socialism. Financial Post editor Terence Corcoran refers to it as “industrial statism.” He equates all industrial policy with the Trump administration’s arbitrary attempts to coerce and forcibly take equity stakes in American companies. If one believes there is no legitimate role for the government in the economy, this makes sense. Of course, by that logic the oil sands — arguably Canada’s biggest industrial policy success story — are socialist to the core.

There is always some level of government intervention in the economy, whether it’s setting and enforcing intellectual property law or building infrastructure or funding research. It is certainly true that governments can go too far, which is why it is crucial to distinguish between seizing the means of production versus giving industries incentive to do things in the public interest.

Doing big things right

While we are now faced with needing to do big things fast to adapt, we need to do them right. Reducing reliance on the United States while boosting internal trade and diversifying our export markets requires more and better infrastructure, fewer internal trade barriers, more effective marketing of Canadian research and development, and deeper integration with other trading partners. There are businesses that would be eager to participate in this transformation, but the overarching goals are far beyond the means of individual companies. Governments need to make investments in training, education, research and infrastructure, but also, in some cases, help de-risk private investments. Building more manufacturing capacity isn’t cheap, for instance, but it may be necessary in a world with thicker borders.

But big things tend to happen slowly — especially with major infrastructure projects that are often rife with delays and cost overruns. Canada’s many interminable transit projects are one example. Some might lament we can’t build big things anymore like the railway that tied the country together. But construction of that “ribbon of steel” came at a terrible price for workers who were treated as disposable and for Indigenous communities along the route. We would never think to build like that again. Nor should we. We can’t steamroll over communities or exploit labourers. We need to work in genuine partnership with Indigenous Peoples, and ensure that we don’t sacrifice safety or the environment.

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By Mitchell Beer

With King Charles III set to deliver the Carney government’s first Speech from the Throne beginning at 11 AM Tuesday, the rumour mill in Ottawa was warping between anxiety and optimism, as early signals about fast-tracking major “nation-building” projects stoked fears that climate impacts, environmental protection, and Indigenous consent might be shunted aside.

Newly-appointed Energy Minister Tim Hodgson set the tone for the discussion Friday, in what CBC described as a “boisterous speech” to a sold-out business audience in Calgary. “Energy is power,” Hodgson told participants. “Energy is Canada’s power. It gives us an opportunity to build the strongest economy in the G7, guide the world in the right direction, and be strong when we show up at a negotiation table.”

He pledged a two-year approval period for major projects, rather than five, declaring that “I want to be very clear. In the new economy we are building, Canada will no longer be defined by delay. We will be defined by delivery.”

Related: Canada’s New Energy Minister Tells Oil and Gas Execs It’s Time for Some Quick Wins

Hodgson said Canada “will remain a reliable global supplier of oil and gas for decades to come,” the Globe and Mail writes, but appeared to emphasize overseas markets that are pivoting swiftly away from fossil fuels. “The real challenge is not whether we produce, but whether we can get the best products to market before someone else does,” he said. “It’s high time to trade more with people who share our values—not just our border.”

But while the Globe says industry executives “have given Mr. Carney’s government a laundry list of ways to attract energy capital and boost energy security, from scrapping a cap on emissions to streamlining project reviews,” CBC reports that Hodgson “did not make any announcements or signal any changes in government policy beyond what the Liberals had pledged during the campaign.” That included pressing the oil sands industry to get moving on the Pathways Alliance project, a $16.5-billion carbon capture hub in northern Alberta that has been stalled while the industry tries to arm-twist more generous subsidies out of the federal government.

“All of us, governments and industry, need to get the Pathways project done,” Hodgson said. “This government will not be a government of talk, but a government of action. We need the same from the province of Alberta and the Pathways Alliance.”

“We need to demonstrate to our customers outside the U.S., and to our fellow Canadians, that we are a responsible industry,” he added. “And this government believes Pathways is critical to that reality.”

Recent independent analyses have indicated that Pathways won’t likely break even without “substantial efficiency improvements” and better revenue prospects and would likely be “scuppered” without permanent subsidies. In October 2023, the Regina-based International CCS Knowledge Centre admitted the technology won’t be ready to scale up by 2035.

Hodgson previously served on the board of MEG Energy, one of the six companies that make up the Alliance and account for about 95% of Canada’s oil sands production.

Streamlined Approvals

Some of the concern anticipating deregulatory promises in the Throne Speech traces back to advance briefings the government has provided for key stakeholders, and to a May 26 Globe and Mail opinion piece that put forward several “simple fixes” to speed up approvals. It suggested reducing “regulatory duplication” for pipelines over 75 kilometres in length and for critical mineral and metal mines, in each case by limiting the reach of the federal Impact Assessment Act.

“Both changes could be made easily and immediately by a simple Cabinet order (amending the regulations under the Impact Assessment Act),” wrote Deloitte Canada national infrastructure leader Jordan Eizenga, Aecon Group Executive VP Tim Murphy, and Ian Anderson, former CEO of Crown-owned Trans Mountain Corporation. “They are not complicated, and they do not require changes to legislation.”

Among other possible candidates for federal streamlining, “a pipeline operator should not need to undergo another impact assessment to add a compressor station on an existing pipeline. And a railway company should be able to add infrastructure adjacent to its mainline without need for further environmental review,” the three authors wrote. As well, “the federal government must designate particular types of projects as being in the national interest where appropriate—fast tracking approval times and reducing budgets.”

That kind of talk raises concern about downgrading the IAA and elevating other regulatory measures that weren’t designed and aren’t implemented with environmental protection in mind.

Vittoria Bellissimo, president and CEO of the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, said she was pleased to hear Hodgson commit to delivery rather than delay, a major projects office to speed up federal regulatory reviews, and interconnections through a pan-Canadian electricity grid.

“Next steps for Canada’s clean energy industry is to identify projects. The priority will be on nation-building projects, built by the private sector with involvement from Indigenous communities, and on quick wins,” Bellissimo wrote on LinkedIn. “Let’s do this.”

On Thursday, Yukon News identified another nation-building project in the making, reporting that British Columbia and the Yukon are working on a new transmission line that will connect the territory to the North American grid.

And Philippe Dunsky, president of Dunsky Energy + Climate Advisors, pointed out that the effort now under way to dismantle the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act could reduce the country’s capital flows to clean power by up to US$1 trillion over the next decade.

“Meantime, Canada has been worried about its ability to attract sufficient capital for its clean energy transition needs, including approximately $1 trillion over the coming 25 years to finance new wind, solar, transmission and distribution, nuclear, and other projects. A big part of the concern had been the attractiveness of the IRA,” Dunsky wrote on LinkedIn.

“Crisis, meet Opportunity.”

But in a release Monday, Nature Canada stressed that nature must be at the centre of federal decision-making.

Related: 95-Metre ‘Mega-Banner’ Urges Carney to Pick a Path, Choose Renewables and Climate Action

“One Project, One Review by federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments is an important policy objective that can be achieved without reopening the federal Impact Assessment Act,” said Executive Director Emily McMillan. “But the federal government cannot abandon reviews of large development projects with environmental effects in federal authority or give carte blanche to provinces to carry out those reviews.”

Omission or Open Door?

Similar worries began rippling through the community last Wednesday, after Prime Minister Mark Carney released a single, concise mandate letter to all his Cabinet ministers that listed seven government priorities—including a new economic and security relationship with the United States, a single, strong Canadian economy, lower costs, and more affordable housing—all of which intersect with climate change, but none of which mentioned it.

During the federal election campaign just ended, “the fact that Mark Carney has previously said that climate change was an existential threat demanding meaningful action gave us confidence we were picking a nicer guy with a steady, predictable hand on the wheel—plus, critically, for many of us, a climate plan,” wrote Delta Management CEO and Canada’s Clean50 founder Gavin Pitchford. “Except now, there’s literally no climate plan or clean economy focus listed anywhere in his top seven priorities, as pushed out in the mandate letter to his new ministers this week.”

On LinkedIn, Pitchford added that diversifying the economy “means diverse products as well as diverse export destinations. The only thing more volatile than Donald Trump is the market for oil and gas. So why on Earth would we double down on pipelines?” Particularly when the global cleantech market is on track to triple in the next decade, he said, while oil and gas “is expected to greatly decrease over the next 15 years.”

But Clean Energy Canada Executive Director Rachel Doran responded to the mandate letter by pointing to the “abundant and realizable opportunities in the clean economy” that governments can tap into.

“The federal government’s current focus on building the economy and improving affordability offers clear opportunities and building blocks for a cleaner Canada,” she said in a release. “All of Canada’s 10 largest non-U.S. trade partners have net-zero commitments and carbon pricing systems, while roughly half of them apply carbon border adjustments on imports and have domestic [electric vehicle] requirements reshaping their car markets. Investing in our supply chains, while growing and leveraging our clean electricity, will be key to building a more globally competitive, and hence resilient, economy—one more able to stand on its own even next to an occasionally unfriendly giant.”

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By Mitchell Beer

Prime Minister Mark Carney and his new cabinet took office Tuesday with some tough, momentous questions on their agenda, most of them still pointing back to the rogue regime waging economic war on Canada from the White House.

But as The Weekender first argued in March, after Carney won the Liberal Party leadership, there’s one fairly easy calculation the Cabinet can make that will set them on track to addressing that challenge. Not least by tackling the domestic vulnerabilities that were driving us apart until Donald Trump’s latest round of rolling outrages pulled us back together.

What’s the cheapest, quickest way to deliver the reliable, affordable energy Canadians need, while boosting domestic manufacturing, driving down climate pollution, and restoring public confidence that our governments can actually deliver on their promises?

If our political leaders answer that question seriously and follow the evidence where it leads, it will bring them directly to a low-carbon energy path that begins with:

• Drastically increasing the energy efficiency of everything;

• Replacing fuels with electricity across a large swath of the economy while decarbonizing the electricity system;

• Seizing the urgent opportunity to rapidly drive down methane emissions, whether or not fossil companies are serious about getting with the program;

• Pairing the rise of renewables and energy efficiency with a managed phaseout of oil, gas, and coal.

A least-cost energy strategy that factored in the fully-loaded cost of climate change would give us a lens for assessing every new pitch for Canada’s energy future—whether it’s a deep energy retrofit program, a local battery storage system, a solar or wind farm, a $100-billion nuclear megaproject, or the ridiculous demands for new pipelines in all directions, hatched by the fossil fuel industry and voiced by the former industry lobbyist they’ve since installed as Alberta’s premier.

Pretty much without exception, an honest answer to this one, crucial question points back to low-carbon options that are practical, affordable, and ready to scale up. They don’t depend on carbon capture and storage technologies that their biggest boosters admit are a decade away from prime time, or expensive direct air capture (DAC) adventures that still emit more carbon than they reduce. They won’t either fry the planet when used as directed or saddle us with eons’ worth of dangerous nuclear waste.

For bonus points, they connect us to a burgeoning global clean energy economy—the same one Carney has in mind when he talks about diversifying our exports beyond one risky, unreliable trading partner.

180° of Speculation

Just as important, this line of thought takes us past the disconnect between statement and action—between the “what” and the “how” of government policy on climate, affordability, and everything else that matters. That gap has cut across all the major political parties for the last deeply performative decade and quite rightly sapped public confidence that anything much will ever get done.

Now, with Carney vowing to “do things that had not been imagined or thought possible, at a speed we haven’t seen before,” his team’s early energy choices will either put his government on a path to success, or make it immeasurably harder for them to get there.

But in the first 100 hours after the Cabinet announcement (heh, he wants to move fast, so no more of this ‘first 100 days’ stuff), we were left with 180° of speculation about where this government will come down on climate change and energy.

We had Carney knowledgeably described as “the most climate-literate PM we’ve ever seen, and maybe the most climate-literate leader among industrialized countries,” while telling CTV news his government will “change things at the federal level that need to be changed in order for projects to move forward”—including the federal Impact Assessment Act and the former Trudeau government’s long-delayed cap on oil and gas emissions.

We heard that newly-minted Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, former head of Ontario power utility Hydro One, board member at oil sands producer MEG Energy, and Carney colleague at Goldman Sachs, will either be the fossil industry’s voice in Cabinet, the former business heavyweight and familiar face who can talk low-carbon sense to the oilpatch, or the steady hand who can make a national renewable power grid a reality.

We saw an emphasis on pragmatism and short-term success from a government that seems enamoured of carbon capture technologies that are nowhere near ready for prime time and new nuclear reactor designs that look great on PowerPoints, but have never been built in the real world.

All of which is a longabouts way of saying that no one can say for sure which lane Team Carney will choose, and you have to wonder whether they’ve decided yet. The next big milestones will be the template language in the PM’s mandate letters to ministers and the Throne Speech that King Charles is scheduled to deliver May 27.

That is, unless we hear anything sooner from Carney or his Cabinet about the climate imperatives he’s known and understood for a decade or more, and the clean energy choices that give him his only chance at tackling any of the other big-picture crises he’s taken on.

The Projects We Want to Speed Up

We’ve known for decades, not years, that there’s a smart, systematic way to run an energy transition. The fine details have shifted over time, but the basic prescription has not.

Start by drastically increasing the energy efficiency of everything.

Electrify key end uses like cars and other vehicles, home heating and cooling, and many industrial processes, now with the added reliability of affordable energy storage, while decarbonizing the electricity system.

Make it an absolute, top priority to phase out emissions of methane—the main component of natural gas, a climate-busting super-pollutant with 84 times the impact of carbon dioxide over a 20-year span, and our single best chance to achieve major climate gains by 2030.

Pay careful attention to the relatively few, more complicated energy uses—like air travel and some heavy industries—that aren’t so simple to decarbonize.

And, crucially, cut with both arms of the scissors by pairing the rise of renewables and energy efficiency with a managed phaseout of the oil, gas, and coal industries whose products are frying the planet when used as directed, while devastating local ecosystems and communities along the way.

With rapid emission cuts and deeper climate resilience as our top-line goals, the energy transition also delivers on the quicker business opportunities that industry has been demanding—even if those aren’t the opportunities the fossil lobby has in mind when it’s doing the demanding.

Even at relatively large scale, solar and wind farms are faster to approve and build than fossil fuel plants, pipelines, or nuclear reactors, largely because they have a far smaller physical and environmental footprint. They generally come in on time and on budget because, unlike the most mega of megaprojects, they aren’t too big to succeed.

Go behind the meter, to the realm of deep energy retrofits, home heat pumps, rooftop solar panels, solar+storage, and community microgrids, and you can afford to speed up the process even more, as long as developers know how to open real conversations with local communities and earn their support.

“The modular nature of solar and wind construction allows for faster development and more predictable construction timelines and costs at different scales,” Eyab Al-Aini, senior research associate, clean growth at the Canadian Climate Institute, told The Weekender in an email earlier this year. “Unlike gas turbines or nuclear generation, where pressure on a few suppliers can limit choice and stretch timelines, the distributed nature of solar equipment manufacturing lowers overall project execution risks.”

Al-Aini added that smaller projects can face lighter permitting requirements because they often “bypass the transmission planning process, can leverage existing onsite assets (roofs, permits),” while benefitting from fewer technical reviews and bypassing long waits to connect to the grid. And behind-the-meter solar and wind, “especially when combined with storage, can both reduce overall site energy use from the grid and also be a source of power during peak demand.”

Note that every megawatt of peak power demand a community can save through energy efficiency or generate behind the meter is a megawatt that needn’t be supplied by methane-intensive gas plants that provincial premiers like Doug Ford are so intent on building in places like Ontario.

The Road Not Taken

Smaller-scale energy isn’t quite as simple as I’m making it sound, and decades ago, a decision on which kind of complexity to embrace was instrumental in bringing us the oil sands industry as we know it today.

When I worked at the late, lamented Canadian Renewable Energy News, like any other early 1980s news outlet in a world before PDFs, we received our share of news leaks in hard copy, delivered in (literal or metaphorical) plain brown envelopes. One draft memo, printed on the recycled map paper that signposted its origins in the then Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, compared the costs and benefits of subsidizing a heavy oil upgrader in Alberta against an equivalent investment in a national home insulation program.

Its conclusions were stunning: The insulation plan would save more energy than the upgrader would produce, creating more jobs that were more evenly distributed across the country. But federal bureaucrats were said to be petrified at the thought of staking the success of their decision on millions of individual, local choices, rather than a single, high-stakes negotiation among first ministers.

You know where that story ended. The upgrader went ahead, and to this day, Canada and especially Alberta are overly dependent on the boom-and-bust industry that received that initial infusion of government largesse, and has been steadily polluting the countryside and our national politics ever since.

New Pipelines Would Need Massive Subsidies

But now, with Trump threatening Canada’s very existence as a sovereign country, that history points to another advantage in accelerating the kind of energy projects we need and want. The ones that increase community control rather than obliterating it and reduce greenhouse gas emissions rather than driving them through the roof.

From the moment the current occupant of the White House began trumping up his baseless case for tariffs and economic annexation, his allies and paymasters in the oil and gas industry knew what to do. The partly American-owned companies in the Alberta oilpatch, many of which no doubt contributed to the industry’s lavish and “breathtakingly corrupt” investment in bringing Trump back to power, immediately dusted off every pipeline megaproject they’d failed to push through over the last decade. Suddenly, industry lobbyists and elected officials were touting carbon bombs like the Energy East and Northern Gateway pipelines as the path to our economic salvation, even the key to our national identity.

When we last looked in on this topic in March, Globe and Mail columnist Adam Radwanski had a good idea of how those questions would be answered. The very obvious absence of any private investors tripping over each other to build new pipelines:

…suggests enormous subsidies would be required to attract the capital, if not outright government ownership. The rationale would have to be that given the security dangers posed by Mr. Trump, Canada can no longer rely on oil from the U.S., or flowing through the U.S., to supply eastern provinces.

But as then-energy and natural resources minister Jonathan Wilkinson pointed out at the time,

there is no way a pipeline would be completed in less than five years. That wouldn’t make it much help with the threat posed this decade by Mr. Trump. And by then, the shift toward electric vehicles—which Mr. Trump may slow, but won’t stop outright as those vehicles get cheaper—could mean less oil is needed.

Even if subsequent events have blunted the International Energy Agency’s projection that oil demand will peak this decade, Radwanski added, “placing a huge bet against it happening next decade isn’t wildly appealing.” Carney’s Quebec lieutenant, former environment and climate minister Steven Guilbeault, made much the same point on Wednesday, the day after the PM’s CTV interview.

“I think before we start talking about building an entire new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure,” Guilbeault told media, noting that the $34.2-billion taxpayer liability known as the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is still operating below capacity. “And, the Canadian Energy Regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028-2029, demand for oil will peak globally, and it will also peak in Canada.”

It All Comes Back to Community

Even or especially as we face down an existential external threat, we have to be honest about a legacy of resource extraction projects—from fossil fuels and pipelines to mining and forestry—that have too often left communities behind and their land base indelibly altered. Changing the channel on that history begins with not repeating the same old, bad old practices of bulldozing projects through local objections, or accelerating approvals and permitting so fast that communities can barely catch their breath, much less assess the impacts and have their say.

If we’re joining together to protect Canada as a nation that is different and distinct, that cannot and must not mean deregulating ourselves out of the values—social and spiritual, economic and physical—that we’ve set out to protect.

Politicians across the spectrum have been tapping into a powerful vein of community pride and purpose. It’s playing out at the national level in response to an international threat. But it traces back to the people, places, and things we know and love—and so much of what we’re all scrambling to defend is local.

That means we don’t want an ExxonMobil subsidiary polluting Indigenous lands and withholding the information from communities for months, or an Australian coal magnate winning regulatory approval for a widely-hated megaproject in the Rocky Mountain foothills, any more than we support Elon Musk’s U.S. gigafactory dumping waste in the Nevada desert and harassing whistleblowers who try to tell the story.

It means holding clean energy projects to those same standards, even knowing that they start out delivering more benefits and fewer impacts than the fossil fuel developments they replace. And setting the expectation that renewable energy developers will consult pro-actively, listen attentively, and look at community input as an opportunity to maximize benefits, minimize impacts, and dodge major flaws in a project design before it’s too late—not just an exercise in box-checking.

We didn’t need Donald Trump to remind us that the energy transition is meant to be about building something better, not just replacing one set of crappy, corrupt industrial practices with another one. Now, Mark Carney and his Cabinet get to prove it, in a moment and on a scale where failure is not an option.

The post Opinion: One energy path brings Carney the big wins he needs. The other one doesn’t. appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Mitchell Beer

Anxiety about new fossil fuel pipelines, optimism about clean energy infrastructure, and at least conditional confidence in Prime Minister Mark Carney’s climate credentials were all part of the reaction after Carney introduced his new Cabinet Tuesday, then appeared to endorse new pipeline development in an interview with a national television network.

At Rideau Hall Tuesday morning, Governor General Mary Simon presided over the swearing-in ceremony for a 28-member Cabinet plus 10 secretaries of state, including:

• Environment and Climate Minister Julie Dabrusin (Toronto—Danforth);

• Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson (Markham–Thornhill);

• Canadian Identity and Culture Minister Steven Guilbeault (Laurier—Sainte-Marie);

• Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson (Vancouver Fraserview–South Burnaby);

• Canada-U.S. Trade, Intergovernmental Affairs and One Canadian Economy Minister Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour);

• Industry Minister Mélanie Joly (Ahuntsic-Cartierville);

• Indigenous Services Minister Mandy Gull-Masty (Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou);

• Arctic Affairs Minister Rebecca Chartrand (Churchill–Keewatinook Aski);

• Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Rebecca Alty (Northwest Territories);

• Emergency Management and Community Resilience Minister Eleanor Olszewski (Edmonton Centre);

• Transport and Internal Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale).

In a statement shortly after the swearing-in, the Prime Minister’s Office said the government’s “primary focus” will be on the economy, and on Donald Trump’s tariff war and annexation threats.

“Canadians elected this new government with a strong mandate to define a new economic and security relationship with the United States, to build a stronger economy, to reduce the cost of living, and to keep our communities safe,” the statement said.

“We have to address and come to a new arrangement with the Americans,” Carney told media. “But our primary focus is on the economy, and our primary focus is on the Canadian economy.”

Clean and Conventional Energies

Hours later, Carney took a different tack in an interview with CTV chief political correspondent Vassy Kapelos, emphasizing an “all of the above” energy mix with room for oil and gas, pipelines, carbon capture and storage (CCS), and nuclear development.

“When I talk about being an energy superpower, I always say in both clean and conventional energies,” he said. “Yes, it does mean oil and gas. It means using oil, our oil and gas here in Canada to displace imports wherever possible, particularly from the United States. It makes no sense to be sending that money south of the border or across the ocean, but yes, it also means more exports without question.”

Carney added: “We need to do multiple things at the same time in order to build this base so that we are creating wealth and competitiveness, better lives for Canadians for generations. So we’re going to be very ambitious across a range. That’s why we’re not asking for one nation-building project. We’re asking for nation-building projects, and we are going to move as rapidly as possible on as many of them as possible.”

That could include pipeline development, building out CCS projects to help get oil and gas to market, and specific changes to measures like the federal Impact Assessment Act and the former Trudeau government’s long-delayed cap on oil and gas emissions, Carney told Kapelos.

“We will change things at the federal level that need to be changed in order for projects to move forward,” he said. “The test is, Canadians deserve results, not rhetoric and not talking past each other.”

Carney’s Quebec lieutenant, former environment and climate minister Steven Guilbeault, put some boundaries around those statements a day later, arguing that Canada should maximize the use of existing pipelines before talking about building more, The Canadian Press reports. He pointed out that the taxpayer-owned Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which cost years of controversy and $34.2 billion to build, is still operating below its full capacity.

“So I think before we start talking about building an entire new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure,” Guilbeault told media. “And, the Canadian Energy Regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028-2029, demand for oil will peak globally, and it will also peak in Canada.”

“Canada’s oil and gas sector has indicated no desire to build new pipelines under the current regulatory environment,” CP notes. But “following the election, 38 Canadian oil and gas CEOs wrote to Carney calling on him to repeal the assessment law and scrap the emissions cap regulations.” During the federal election campaign, Carney said he would stand behind an “emissions cap, not a production cap,” while speeding up federal technology investments to help bring down oil and gas sector emissions.

‘Pick a Lane’

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith was quick to criticize the Cabinet announcement, homing in on veteran Toronto—Davenport MP Julie Dabrusin’s appointment to the environment and climate portfolio. “I am very concerned the Prime Minister has appointed what appears to be yet another anti-oil and gas environment minister,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. She described Dabrusin as a “self-proclaimed architect of the designation of plastics as toxic”, a “staunch advocate against oilsands expansion, proponent of phasing out oil and gas,” and a former Parliamentary secretary to Guilbeault, as well as former environment minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

“Fire, meet gas,” agreed Smith’s chief of staff Rob Anderson.

Climate Action Network-Canada countered that Carney has some choices to make, after a campaign in which he endorsed the emissions cap while pledging to strengthen the country’s industrial carbon pricing system, introduce investment tax credits for clean energy and technology, and make Canada a “world leader” in CCS.

“We’ve heard Mr. Carney, in particular during the election campaign, adopt an ‘all of the above’ approach to energy and refusing to pick a lane between a cleaner, safer, renewable powered future and doubling down on the volatile fossil fuel status quo,” said CAN-Rac Executive Director Caroline Brouillette. “I think that in 2025 we don’t have the luxury of not picking a lane, both from an environmental side of things but also from an economic side of things.”

Adam Scott, executive director of Shift Action for Pension Wealth and Planetary Health, agreed.

“I dislike the word ‘balance’ with respect to climate, as it falsely implies equal value for the causes and solutions to the climate crisis,” he told The Energy Mix in an email. “New fossil fuel export infrastructure such as pipelines or LNG terminals are not in any way compatible with a credible climate alignment plan for Canada. Nor would government action to subsidize locking in new fossil fuel infrastructure provide a long-term benefit in improving Canada’s economic competitiveness. On the contrary, Canada’s over-reliance economically on oil and gas is a significant fiscal liability as the industry goes through certain structural decline through the energy transition.”

In a media interview Tuesday, Mark Winfield, co-chair of York University’s Sustainable Energy Initiative, called the Cabinet announcement a “potential downgrading” for climate and environment, with several climate hawks shifting from portfolios like housing and energy to the back benches. “On the whole I think we are left at best unclear on where we stand on climate, energy transitions, and decarbonization,” he told The Mix Wednesday. “The emphasis on nuclear, pipelines, and CCS was pretty clear in the [CTV] interview,” and “I think this goes back to how do we define ‘clean’ in this context. It is not clear where renewables fit at this point.”

Meeting the Moment

Claire Seaborn, a former chief of staff to Wilkinson, said the government is mainstreaming the climate and energy transition, not diminishing it.

“I do not see this Cabinet as a downgrade,” she told The Energy Mix. “In fact, I see it as meeting the moment on climate, which is all about building major projects. Back in 2015, the conversation was about whether climate change is real, and commitments. In 2019, it was about net-zero and carbon pricing. Right now, the conversation on climate change is actually about building. This government is very pro-building, and that actually makes it very strong on climate action.”

Seaborn said she saw strong climate commitments in Carney’s election platform and on the campaign trail, even if he didn’t speak the words in the CTV interview. Fernando Melo, federal director – policy and government affairs at the Canadian Renewable Energy Association, agreed that “if you look at the Liberal Party platform, there were quite a few mentions of renewable electricity and electricity storage in there—including in the proposal to make Canada an ‘energy superpower’. Not being mentioned in every media interview doesn’t worry me or CanREA’s members.”

“That said,” he added, “we will hold the government accountable for its promises to our sector and will continue to push for the speedy introduction of legislation that would finalize and improve the Clean Economy Investment Tax Credits, among other critical policies.”

It’s also “great to see a few fellow cyclists at the Cabinet table.” Melo said.

Regardless of the specific choices it makes, “you’re going to see this government recognizing that the world is moving toward low-carbon and net-zero, and that can take many forms,” Seaborn said. A pipeline can carry oil, gas, captured carbon, or green ammonia, so “when you say ‘pipeline’, that is entirely consistent with the fact that Mark Carney knows we are moving toward net-zero.”

Normand Mousseau, scientific director of the Trottier Energy Institute at Polytechnique Montréal, said he couldn’t see the sense in that approach.

“I still don’t understand what the deal is with pipelines,” he told The Mix in an email. “As far as I know, there are no private sector projects on the table, and the last pipeline the federal government constructed cost upwards of $34 billion.”

He added that he’s puzzled “that other infrastructure linked to decarbonizing Canada, such as interprovincial links, massive storage, etc., have not been mentioned. I think that we need a clear message from PM Carney that he intends to bring Canada on path to its 2050 climate objectives, especially because we are still far behind what is needed to reach our 2035 goal.”

The ‘Climate-Literate PM’

There’s little doubt that the new prime minister understands the stakes in the climate emergency and the broader directions to address it. It isn’t yet clear what path he’ll choose.

“Prime Minister Carney is the most climate-literate PM we’ve ever seen, and maybe the most climate-literate leader among industrialized countries,” said Aaron Freeman, principal of Toronto-based Pivot Strategic Consulting. “However, decisions on specific climate policies are going to be made within the political frame that he has placed himself in. There’s a narrative and political coalition that he’s built, and many of the issues we care about are going to be settled according to these parameters.”

Freeman suggested looking to the template language in the forthcoming ministerial mandate letters for early hints at how portfolios like sovereignty, trade, housing, and economy could become focal points for climate and energy transition strategy.

Freeman and others pointed to Dabrusin as one of the strong environmental champions in Cabinet. He added that Hodgson—who led Ontario power utility Hydro One, sat on the board of oil sands producer MEG Energy, and previously worked with Carney at the Goldman Sachs investment banking firm—brings cross-cutting expertise to the energy and natural resources portfolio.

“Taken together, these two appointments are reflective of Carney’s ‘all-in’ energy strategy,” he wrote, “a strategy that may not end up being significantly different than Trudeau’s framing on energy, except perhaps incrementally in terms of emphasis.”

One veteran observer speculated that Hodgson’s power sector experience may outweigh his oil sands exposure—making him a trusted ally that Carney can count on to sustain momentum toward a national renewable power grid while the PM focuses on issues like trade and sovereignty. Shift Action’s Scott said he would withhold judgement on the government’s clean energy commitments until he sees the mandate letters.

“I hope Tim Hodgson will draw on his considerable governance expertise in a variety of positions to see that the best long-term interest of Canadians lies in a rapid investment and buildout in the clean electrification of our energy systems,” Scott wrote. “‘All of the above’ energy policies are an abdication of leadership from both an economic and climate perspective in 2025.”

“Electricity is the pillar of the transition to net-zero,” Mousseau agreed.” So, having somebody who understands this sector is crucial, even if energy is under provincial jurisdiction.” Hodgson’s knowledge of the oil and gas sector might also “give him leverage to push for decarbonization,” Mousseau added, but only “with a clear message from PM Carney.”

Climate Across All Portfolios

While much of the early reaction on the new government’s climate priorities focused on Dabrusin, Hodgson, and Carney himself, there’s also growing recognition that a climate focus will spread right across the federal system. “Every minister in some way will have to acknowledge and respond to the reality of climate change. every minister, whether it’s in their region or their programs,” Seaborn said. “That’s just the reality of climate.”

Scott agreed that climate action “is inextricably required to address the real-world concerns and needs of Canadians on housing, affordability, economic productivity, trade, and sovereignty. Climate does not exist as a standalone priority, it must be integrated in all policy.”

Those realities make Canada’s existing climate policy mechanisms “only a small part of what is required,” he said—so that the government’s housing strategy, for example, “must integrate efficiency, adaptation, and electrification to ensure Canadians have access to affordable, comfortable, climate safe housing. It’s not optional.”

Melo agreed that “the electrification of Canada’s homes, transportation, and industry reduces the need for energy transported through the U.S. or from other countries, especially if that electricity comes from locally generated renewables. Building new energy-efficient homes with integrated solar and storage will help Canadians reduce their energy bills, which in turn supports affordability.” And “investments in productivity, industry, and innovation can help onshore the production of critical components for the energy transition.”

Connecting to needs and issues outside the climate space is also essential because “the climate crisis is frankly not top of mind for most Canadians,” Melo added. “Canadian sovereignty, the economy, and the cost of living/inflation are the issues that are keeping people up at night. Not putting these issues front and centre in messaging and actions is a great way for a new minority government to find itself losing public support quickly.”

Jackson Wyatt, founder and CEO of modular housing manufacturer CABN, said half of the Cabinet will be involved with housing strategy in one way or another. “It’s energy. It’s waste and water. It’s municipal alignment. It’s a solution for Northern communities and First Nations.” Meeting those challenges will mean “expedited deployment of funds to address the problem quickly,” rapid upskilling for trades, and “ making sure we maintain our standard of healthy living and sustainability,” all by building “Canadian homes with Canadian materials for Canadians,” he said.

Shauna Sylvester, founder and lead convenor of Vancouver-based Urban Climate Leadership, cited incoming Housing and Infrastructure Minister Gregor Robertson as one of the Cabinet members who will be “deeply committed to bringing a climate lens to their portfolios.” But “I’m holding off assessing Prime Minister Carney’s approach to climate until I’ve had a chance to hear and see more,” she told The Mix. “I think we need fewer pronouncements and more action, so I’ll be evaluating this government on their actions.”

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By Ian Urquhart

“Alberta is a place soaked in self-deception.” Those words began Alberta-based journalist Mark Lisac’s 2004 book aimed at shattering the myths that have unhelpfully animated too much of Alberta’s politics over the past few decades.

Current and former Alberta politicians are once again embracing and treating separatist grievances seriously. That means it’s time once again to highlight and challenge political misconceptions that have the potential to destroy Canada.

Oil is the root of one such myth. The misconception? That Ottawa perennially opposes the oil and gas sector and is determined to stop its continued growth. The National Energy Program (1980), the Northern Gateway pipeline project (2016), the Energy East Pipeline (2017) and the proposed greenhouse gas pollution cap allegedly prove Ottawa’s hostility.

Notably missing from these grievances is the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans Mountain Expansion Project. Ottawa supported these projects aimed at transporting Alberta oil sands crude to foreign markets. The federal government even purchased the Trans Mountain project from Kinder Morgan in 2018 — not to kill it, but to build it.

Read more: Justin Trudeau’s risky gamble on the Trans Mountain pipeline

As for Keystone XL, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney thanked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for supporting the project. This doesn’t fit the separatist narrative, so it’s largely ignored.

Oil sands booster

No one should dispute the National Energy Program’s devastating impact on Alberta’s conventional oil and gas sector 40 years ago. But the oil sands, not conventional oil, propelled Canada to its position as the world’s fourth largest oil producer.

Has Ottawa facilitated or obstructed the spectacular post-1990 growth of oil sands production?

The record shows that, since the mid-1970s, Ottawa has facilitated and supported the oil sands sector. The federal government helped keep the Syncrude project alive in 1975 when it took a 15 per cent interest in Canada’s second oil sands operation.

Ironically, Ottawa’s enthusiasm for more, not less, petroleum from the oil sands also appeared in 1980 via the National Energy Program (NEP), the devil in Alberta’s conservative catechism. What most accounts of the NEP don’t mention is that Ottawa offered tax benefits to oil sands companies while stripping them from conventional oil producers.

Furthermore, the NEP’s “made-in-Canada” pricing effectively guaranteed Syncrude would receive the world price for its production. At $38 per barrel, Syncrude received more than double what conventional producers received. If the NEP was harsh on conventional oil producers, it helped create a golden future for the oil sands.

In the mid-1990s, Ottawa helped propel the post-1995 oil sands boom. The industry-dominated National Task Force on Oil Sands Strategies sought federal tax concessions to promote oil sands growth. The federal government delivered them in its 1996 budget, despite Prime Minister Jean Chretien’s general concern with cutting the deficit.

Again, these measures clearly contradict the myth of federal opposition to the oil industry.

Generous emissions caps

Ottawa’s policy favouritism towards the oil sands didn’t end there. It has consistently animated the federal government’s treatment of the oil sands in its climate change policies.

The federal Climate Change Plan for Canada (2002) treated oil and gas leniently. Its measures for large industrial emitters bore a striking resemblance to the climate change policy preferences of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. Suncor and Syncrude, the two leading oil sands producers, estimated these federal proposals would add a pittance, between 20 and 30 cents, to their per barrel production costs.

Justin Trudeau’s response to Alberta’s 2015 oil sands emissions cap also underlined Ottawa’s favouritism, not hostility, to the dominant player in Canada’s oil patch.

Rachel Notley’s NDP government set this cap at 100 million tonnes of GHG per year, plus another 10 million tonnes allowed to new upgrading and co-generation facilities. This cap was a whopping 39 million tonnes or 55 per cent higher than what the oil sands emitted in 2014.

This generous cap contributed to a tremendous increase in oil sands production. Healthy profits became record profits in 2022. Ottawa embraced Alberta’s largesse, incorporating the province’s cap into its post-2015 climate policies.

Furthermore, Ottawa increased its leniency towards the oil sands by exempting new in-situ (non-mining) oil sands projects in Alberta from the federal Impact Assessment Act. This exemption applies until Alberta’s emissions cap is reached. Canada’s latest National Inventory Report on greenhouse gas emissions reported record oil sands GHG emissions of 89 million tonnes in 2023, still 11 million tonnes shy of the 100 million tonne threshold.

Weaponizing myths

Finally, we have today’s proposed national cap on greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta is apoplectic about the cap. But whether or not it’s intentional, Premier Danielle Smith’s outrage feeds into secessionist sentiment by seemingly misrepresenting the cap’s impact on oil and gas production.

Smith and her environment minister use the work of the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer (PBO) to nurture their “Ottawa hates oil” narrative. They claim the officer’s analysis of the cap’s economic impact showed it “will cut oil and gas production by five per cent, or more than 245,000 barrels per day.”

This is simply not true.

In fact, the PBO concluded that, with the cap, oil sands production “is projected to remain well above current levels” — 15 per cent higher than in 2022. The proposed federal emissions cap, like the Alberta NDP’s cap of a decade ago, is higher than current oil sands emissions levels. The PBO concluded the proposed ceiling for oil sands emissions would be six per cent higher than 2022 emissions.

Ottawa’s proposed cap, in fact, continues its decades-long support of the oil ands.

Myths are central to our being. When I tell my grandsons about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I hope to inspire curiosity, imagination and interest in their grandmother’s Irish heritage.

But in politics, fanciful stories can be dangerous. Some weaponize myths, using the fictions at their core to encourage followers to let falsehoods rule their behaviour. That seems to be playing out yet again in Alberta. We must demand better from the political class.

The post Opinion: Alberta has long accused Ottawa of trying to destroy its oil industry. That’s a dangerous myth appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Leah Levac, Jane Stinson, Leah M. Fusco

Canada’s recent federal election was regularly dubbed one of the most consequential of the last 50 years. Economic and sovereignty threats from United States President Donald Trump were key issues in the campaign. In response, pledges about energy infrastructure and resource development played an important role in party platforms.

We have been studying impact assessments, the uneven consequences of resource development and sustainable energy transitions for over 15 years. We’re concerned about what and who may be overlooked as the government moves to become “an energy superpower,” in part by getting projects “done faster and better.”

We’re also interested in how the newly elected Liberal government can support more just energy transitions — that is, moving toward low carbon energy and economies that prioritize equity for workers and communities.

Read more: How to ensure Alberta’s oil and gas workers have jobs during the energy transition

Challenges with Liberal promises

The Liberal Party platform includes renewed attention to an east-west energy corridor. It also promises to speed up and streamline the review of major resource projects and “get big projects built quickly” by “shifting the focus of project review from ‘why’ to ‘how.’”

The platform also promises more support for Indigenous participation in major projects and commits to using Gender-Based Analysis Plus — or GBA Plus — in policies and programs. GBA Plus is a method for assessing how diverse groups of people experience policies, programs and initiatives.

Through our research, we have advocated strongly for applying GBA Plus in the resource sector, including by centring community knowledge in impact assessments and proposing strategies for improving how Indigenous women’s experiences and knowledge are considered in impact assessments.

Over the last year, we also produced — along with our colleague Deborah Stienstra — two major research reports for the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada. Both were on the application of GBA Plus in regional assessments for offshore wind in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Regional assessments are a planning tool used before specific projects are proposed. They help identify important issues to consider if specific project assessments — for instance, for critical mineral mines, offshore wind projects or other resource developments — are conducted. If done well, regional assessments can help with more equitable and efficient project planning and development in the long run.

What do the findings from our work in this area suggest in terms of how the Liberal government should proceed with its energy vision?

Duty to consult

The 2019 Impact Assessment Act requires meaningful execution of the duty to consult with Indigenous people affected by a major economic development.

The Liberal Party made important promises to advance Indigenous participation in major projects and to double capacity support so more Indigenous communities can take an active role in project decisions at various stages.

But what the Liberal platform overlooks is Indigenous Peoples’ right to resist and refuse developments in their territories, or how specifically to ensure that Indigenous women and gender-diverse people are meaningfully engaged.

Moving forward, the Liberals must meet their constitutional duty to consult with Indigenous Peoples, while being guided by the United Nations’ principle of free, prior and informed consent per legislation that confirms Canada’s commitment to the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

GBA Plus

During the campaign, the Liberal Party reiterated its support for GBA Plus by listing it as one of six key themes in its Make Canada Strong vision.

The Liberals seemingly recognize that GBA Plus is an important tool for advancing equity for women, gender-diverse people, people with disabilities and racialized people by:

“Identifying direct and indirect benefits of programs (e.g. job opportunities, access to programs and services) … and considering how these benefits will be distributed across diverse groups.”

The Liberal platform does not explicitly raise GBA Plus in relation to becoming an “energy superpower.” But GBA Plus has been gaining attention in the resource sector — particularly in relation to the development of specific projects — since the requirement to consider “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors” was included in the 2019 Impact Assessment Act.

GBA Plus needs to be applied in project-specific assessments (for specific developments, such as mines and hydroelectric dams) and in planning assessments (like regional assessments).

In our work on the regional assessments for offshore wind in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, we demonstrate the value of applying GBA Plus throughout all impact assessment processes.

Doing so helps strengthen community engagement efforts, identify potential effects early, determine the data sources required for monitoring those effects, fill data gaps and highlight barriers that prevent diverse groups of people from benefiting from energy projects.

For example, without adequate child-care options, many women cannot access the high-paying jobs that sometimes accompany resource projects. The Liberal government’s support for GBA Plus must therefore be explicitly incorporated into its energy proposals.

What and who is lost with fast tracking

A just energy transition is one concerned not only with planetary survival, but also with the effects of the transition on people who will be most affected.

The Liberal party’s vision for becoming an energy superpower includes “conventional energy resources” (like oil) as well as clean and renewable energy (like solar and hydro) and critical minerals needed to support decarbonization and energy transitions.

We disagree with the Liberal Party’s commitment to “shifting the focus of project review from ‘why’ to ‘how.’”

We need to ask how — and even whether — an energy project contributes to a just transition. Answering questions about whether projects will meet climate commitments and help advance equity for workers and communities is critical. These questions are best asked early, during planning phases and as part of regional assessments, before specific projects are proposed.

The duty to consult, GBA Plus and just energy transitions are interconnected and necessary commitments for sustainable energy production.

Together, they can contribute to a relationship with Indigenous Peoples that recognizes their sovereignty and to a more equitable and sustainable future. But these commitments cannot be meaningfully realized when fast-tracking development, because they require time and relationship-building.

Prioritizing fast-tracking — thereby falling short on these priorities and legal commitments — will backfire. It will lead to delays rather than more efficient processes, and will worsen existing inequities.

The post Opinion: Mark Carney wants to make Canada an energy superpower — but what will be sacrificed for that goal? appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.

By Tik Root

President Donald Trump came into office promising to “drill, baby, drill” and, on day one, signed an executive order aimed at “Unleashing American Energy.” On Friday, just over 100 days later, oil companies released their first quarterly earnings reports of Trump’s second term. They weren’t pretty.

The two largest oil companies in the United States saw revenues tumble. Earnings at Exxon Mobil fell 6 per cent compared to last year, to $7.7 billion. Chevron’s first-quarter income dropped more than a third, to $3.5 billion. “We are seeing significant downward pressure on prices and margins,” Darren Woods, chief executive of Exxon Mobil, said during a call with analysts on Friday. “In this environment, it is more important than ever to focus on what we can control.”

This caps a three month stretch — and the first 100 days of an administration — that saw oil executives swooning at the possibility of a boom. But since President Trump has taken office, headwinds have mounted.

The price of a barrel of oil has fallen from almost $80 to about $60 since his inauguration, sweeping new tariffs have made things like steel costlier, and economic uncertainty has made planning considerably more challenging. According to Baker Hughes, an oil field service provider, the number of drilling rigs in the nation’s largest oil field, the Permian Basin, has fallen about 3 per cent over the last month.

“There seems to be a lack of continuity in the policymaking that affects that industry,” said Sanjay Srinivasan, a professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at Penn State University.

On the one hand, President Trump declared a national energy emergency within hours of taking office and has been pushing for an expansion of fossil fuel extraction. The Department of Interior, for example, announced plans to open more tracts of public land to drilling, including in the Arctic. It also moved to shorten the permitting process for projects from as long as two years to 28 days.

“They are fast-tracking dangerous, disastrous projects that are going to put the health and safety of people, the water, and the environment at risk,” said Jasmine Vazin, deputy director of the Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign at the Sierra Club, pointing to the Line 5 pipeline in Michigan as one example. “This is what [oil companies] wanted.”

At the same time, the president has called for oil prices of $50 a barrel, which would decimate the industry. “At $50-per-barrel oil, we will see U.S. oil production start to decline immediately and likely significantly,” one anonymous executive responded in a Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas survey. “There cannot be ‘U.S. energy dominance’ and $50-per-barrel oil; those two statements are contradictory.” Others reported already cutting future capital expenditures based on the administration’s ambitions.

Trump’s tariffs have also taken a toll on oil companies by raising the cost of the steel they rely on for wells and other equipment, as well as likely slowing global demand for oil, which generally drops along with economic activity. Foreign producers deciding to increase output, including an OPEC+ announcement last week to boost its supply by more than 400,000 barrels a day in June, has only compounded domestic pressures.

“I have never felt more uncertainty about our business in my entire 40-plus-year career,” said one executive in the Federal Reserve survey. Another added: “Tariff policy is impossible for us to predict and doesn’t have a clear goal. We want more stability.”

Whether the Trump administration can bring that stability remains an open question. Even if it does, there’s no guarantee that American oil output — which was already at record levels before Trump took office  — can grow significantly, or that it will create more jobs. It’s also unclear if Trump cares.

“I’ll get those guys drilling,” he told supporters in Greenville, North Carolina, in November. “If they drill themselves out of business, I don’t give a damn.”

So far, that seems to be the trajectory. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that American oil-and-gas companies lost more than $280 billion in stock-market value between April 2, when Trump unveiled his tariff blitz, and Monday.

That drop outpaced that of every other major sector.

The post Trump promised to help Big Oil. Its revenues plummeted. appeared first on Thoughtful Journalism About Energy's Future.