For all of his experience as a central banker and economist, Mark Carney is still relatively new to the business of politics. That showed on Tuesday, when he made the fatal mistake of giving a straight answer to a question from a journalist about Canada’s Impact Assessment Act. “We do not plan to repeal Bill C-69, to answer your question directly,” he said.
Conservative MPs and proxies immediately clipped this response and started sharing it on their social media channels. It was proof, they claimed, of Carney’s apparent duplicity — he has previously said he would support new pipeline projects — and his supposedly “radical agenda” to keep Canada’s oil in the ground. “As Trudeau’s economic advisor, Carney’s anti-resource development agenda has made Canada more dependent on the US,” CPC shadow finance minister Jasraj Singh Hallan said on social media, assiduously ignoring the fact that the first new oil and gas pipelines to non-US tidewater in more than 70 years were both built under Trudeau’s government.
That wasn’t the only lie of omission. Hallan and his colleagues also conveniently left out the words that immediately followed Carney’s supposedly scandalous comments about Bill C-69. “What we have said, and made very clear ten days ago, is that we will move for projects of national interest to remove duplication in terms of environmental assessments and other approvals. We will follow, as the federal government, the principle of ‘one project, one approval.’ That’s essentially what he said in a March 21 presser, when he told reporters that “we will work with the provinces and other stakeholders, Indigenous groups, to identify projects of national significance and accelerate the timeframe to build.”
That “radical” agenda, meanwhile, is really just a recognition of scientific fact: there’s only so much oil, gas, and coal the world can burn and still meet its Paris Accord targets. According to a 2021 paper published in Nature, the climate math is clear: more than half of all global oil and gas reserves — including, yes, Canada’s — have to stay in the ground.
If the oil and gas industry wants to avoid this fate, it could always get to work on decarbonizing its barrels more quickly. If it can achieve a truly net-zero barrel of oil, as it has claimed repeatedly, then that would give it a competitive advantage in a carbon-constrained world. Carney, as Governor of the Bank of Canada and the UN’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, was at the forefront of global efforts to support and reward this transition towards a lower carbon economy.
Those efforts have stalled out in the face of the Trump administration’s intransigence towards anything even remotely resembling climate policy. It has gutted any funding for renewable energy and put all of its considerable political weight behind the development of fossil fuels, all in the name of what Trump calls “energy dominance.”
Poilievre’s preference here is telling. For all of his half-hearted attempts to criticize Trump recently, Pierre Poilievre seems very enthusiastic about pursuing the same energy policies in Canada. He has pledged to eliminate the industrial carbon tax, one Carney has promised to strengthen, and signed off recently on a list of demands from oil and gas CEOs that include — of course — less regulation and more pipelines. He has also said he would “encourage” Trump to approve the Keystone pipeline, which would increase Canada’s economic dependence on America.
And, like Trump, Poilievre has also taken to lying repeatedly about the supposed impact that Bill C-69 had on the Canadian oil and gas industry and its own dreams of dominance. “This Liberal law blocked BILLIONS of dollars of investment in oil & gas projects, pipelines, LNG plants, mines, and so much more,” he said on social media. As University of Alberta professor Andrew Leach noted in response, none — literally, not even one — of the projects on Poilievre’s list were actually assessed under C-69. But for Poilievre’s base, their feelings on this issue have no room for things like facts.
This renewed bet by Poilievre on the oil and gas industry might help his Conservative Party of Canada win more seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan, if they didn’t already hold all but two of them. But it’s hard to see how it will help the party improve its fortunes in places like British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec, which is where the election will actually be decided — and where being as indifferent as possible to climate change isn’t a winning strategy. Somehow, they didn’t learn this lesson in their 2019 and 2021 defeats. Maybe a third defeat will do the trick.
Comments
Three strikes and you're out so they'll be looking again for another leader. Maybe it is time for a woman to head the Cons reformed to soften their hardline message. Maybe the soft spoken, compassionate, intelligent, small c con reformed Melissa Lantsman would be a good replacement. With her wonderful articulation of their constant concerns she might attract unhappy women, not just already unhappy men supporting the reformed.
Soft spoken, compassionate . . . Lantsman? Did you forget sarcasm tags or were you being serious? You gotta remember Poe's Law these days.
Not familiar with "Poe's Law;" is it some version of "if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck....?"
Lantsman is unfortunately another token woman to make us all think conservatives have "evolved" in some ways, but the majority still don't REALLY accept homosexuality as a thing any more than they do climate change. (Harper DID warn us all when he muzzled scientists quite some time ago.)
And devout Leslyn Lewis a few spots over from Lantsman is against women's right to choose so basically cancels Lantsman out.
Poilievre himself DOES accept women's bodily rights AND homosexuality actually, but the majority of cons cancels HIM out on that.
The fact that a majority of the CPC also support Trump ALMOST makes you sorry for PP.
Trying to straddle that line AND conjure up actual POLICY to match Carney's has made him pale, sweaty, and reading more of his remarks than usual at all these pesky "press conferences," although the party did what it could in anticipation of this by excluding the press from his campaign bus.
Hehehe.....
Poe's law basically says that it's impossible to be sure if someone is being sarcastic on the internet, because no matter how obviously outrageous the thing you sarcastically say, there will be people out there who would say it seriously. It has become more . . . prominently, obviously true since Trump. As a result, people often have to resort to specifying that they are being sarcastic, so people don't just take them for a moronic Trumpian. A pity because it reduces the elegance of sarcasm to have to underline it that way, but these are the times we live in.
All women aren't created equal though, any more than men are, so no token woman can alter that "hardline message" now that they've got a head of steam as it were.
Denial Smith represents the ceiling for women, as "da boys' convoy" does for the conservatives. Mark Carney exudes and embodies a return to civility, competence and the before times in Canadian politics. Finally.
The trouble with Pierre Poilievre, is the parties' ties to oil & gas donations and his connection to Danielle Smith who clearly is offside with the rest of Canada dealing with the Orange Menace to the south. Poilievre is not speaking too loudly about where his allegiance lays in case as PM, he would have to deal with the Orange Menace and conflict of interest with his corrupt oil & gas donors at the same.
Poilievre's pipeline dream and energy corridor would take years to even become useful and missing the point we need economic actions now to soften the blow from the Orange Menace.
Instead, Poilievre is focused on valid issues like the cost of everything and other non-issue stuff like C-69 we don't care about currently. We know the conservatives are not climate change friendly, in fact refused to acknowledge climate change is real. Poilievre campaign is off the rails at this point and refuses to acknowledge the real concerns at this stage of the game.
The Liberals despite the bills and other actions, has not stopped dealing with energy across the country, they just know that pipeline can't be built that quickly, won't solve the current issues and tax payers are not interested in footing the bill to do so. OIl & gas has no interest at the moment, unless someone else pays the bill. Carney has not ruled out a west-east pipeline, he just knows it won't help at this very point in time. Wind and solar however, is a lot quicker to expand and just noticed this week, a solar and wind farm north-east of us has been expanding to provide more energy to the region as we move away from oil & gas.
The Liberals’ “radical agenda” to keep Canada’s oil in the ground is an abysmal failure.
Canada’s O&G industry is enjoying record profits on record production.
With enemies like the Liberals, the O&G industry does not need friends.
Fawcett: “If [the oil and gas industry] can achieve a truly net-zero barrel of oil, as it has claimed repeatedly, then that would give it a competitive advantage in a carbon-constrained world.”
Since "a truly net-zero barrel of oil" is an impossibility, why even mention it?
CCS captures not one molecule of the 80-90% of emissions from a barrel of oil generated downstream by consumers.
Upstream, CCS is effective only in applications with high concentration streams. Not the case for the oilsands industry, apart from upgraders.
Pembina Institute: In the oilsands sector, "most CO2 is emitted in low concentration streams, and the efforts to capture it will be challenging and expensive."
CCS captures a fraction of the oilsands industry's upstream emissions and zero emissions downstream at the consumer end. Captures no other fossil-fuel pollutants.
Full decarbonization of the oilsands is not realistic. The oilsands has too many small, diffuse emission sources.
In this scenario, total emissions are high, but CCS is not economical or practical. Low-concentration CO2 streams incur high compression costs. In situ projects distributed over a wide area also incur high transportation costs. In situ projects are at a double disadvantage.
As per 2022 Pembina Institute "Getting on Track" report, heaters and boilers generate low-concentration CO2 streams. The only practical CCS application in the oilsands is hydrogen production plants associated with upgraders.
CO2 from small or diffuse sources like vehicles, heavy diesel powered machinery and trucks, tailings ponds, and exposed mine deposits cannot be captured at all.
Basically, emissions from everything in the oilsands not connected to a central power- or heat-source generates cannot be captured.
The only energy corridor I want to see is east to west high voltage DC transmission lines.
Amen to that!
The LPC's chief pipeline builders and industry Bid Daddys and Mommys are no longer in a place to blow streams of cash anymore. That would be luminaries like Trudeau, Freeland, Morneau and Carr.
There is ample evidence that Carney will shake his head at huge public expenditures on O&G, like $34B (TMX), $30B (2024 O&G subsidies) and so forth when the nation is facing a serious economic crisis.
So far -- yes, it's very early in his tenure -- he chose to spend just $0.2B on LNG (still too much, but proving a token gesture is just politics) but not long after announced a policy for a $35B national housing strategy that will have far reaching benefits in the entire national economy, not just one sector. The latter will involve the private sector, which is already the main presence in design and construction.
I don't know exactly what will happen because there is no crystal ball and mind reading isn't a real thing, but the signs point to a realignment of Liberal spending priorities. Carney also has his backing narrative built over 10 years on embracing the transition and building clean energy infrastructure. It's not reasonable to assume a Carney government will automatically continue the Trudeau-Freeland O&G gravy train when there has been a change over of thinkers and controllers of the money levers at the top. Even Wilkinson is "flexible" in his priorities and is moving with the change to "there is no business case for major pipelines." Chances are Carney is seemingly open to a pipeline at this juncture in the campaign but will put the onus on the oil industry to build it if he forms government while he deals directly with the huge aftermath of a serious trade war with scarce public funds.
The circumstances have dramatically changed in very short order. So have the key players at the top of the LPC. Why should we assume Carney, a very experienced economist, will merely continue the stupidity of spending way too much in one direction, especially during a trade war and when he himself previously publicly warned the financial sector and governments of the dangers and costs of damage by climate change?
In this election there are only two realistic choices.
Exactly. We can all feel some hope now, which has its own momentum, especially at times of genuine crisis on multiple fronts. It feels like it did with Kamala until word got out that a woman was making headway....
Carney calls himself a pragmatist, which he truly must be in the context of his truly rarefied work experience that even encompassed Harper and co. FFS. Few seem to appreciate this man's calibre as the leader we've all been waiting for, who chose the Liberal Party, AND was constantly courted by Justin Trudeau.
In addition, although it's also absent in the media, his wife is very accomplished in her own right, and shares his focus on climate change.
Check out this hilarious Honest Government Ad on the Canadian election:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wT_n4Khmq0o
I hope you're right about Carney. As you've pointed out, if he doesn't actively support oil and gas it will not get what it wants. Still, having said we need an east-west pipeline and being for carbon capture and storage, Carney continues the incredibly damaging message that we're not in a climate emergency - and that the Liberals are willing to lie to get elected. Neither of these say "climate progress" at anywhere near the scale we need!