Deliberate Carney Ambiguity On Energy Policy A Major Red Flag For A Nation Desperate For Energy Affordability & Independence

By Geoff Russ, Special to the National Citizens Coalition and the Energy Affordability Now campaign.

Day after day, the Liberal Party delays the return of Parliament so they can pretend their leadership race is not a coronation of Mark Carney. Despite wasting so much time and taxpayer money, Carney has provided no clear answers on what his policies would entail, save for the carbon tax with a makeover.

Even that single, incoherent, rambling answer had to be practically beaten out of him by journalists. When it comes to crime, immigration, or energy, his effective silence can only be interpreted as a pledge to maintain Justin Trudeau’s Laurentian regime of lawless streets, open doors, and the squeezing of the petroleum industry.

Thankfully, Canada remains a large country, full of people who understand the importance of energy and are not shy about supporting it as a means of securing the economy.

Haisla Chief Councillor Crystal Smith was just awarded the 2025 Testimonial Dinner Award on February 7 in Vancouver for her work in bringing to life the $5.5-billion, Haisla-owned Cedar LNG project in Kitimat.

During that same week, the First Nations LNG Alliance signed an MOU with several energy advocacy organizations in Tokyo to advance the goal of exporting Canadian LNG to Japan. However, while one project comes to life in Kitimat that will help meet that objective, another was snuffed out by the Liberal government.

Projected to be located in the same neighbourhood as Cedar LNG, the planned $11-billion Pacific Future Energy refinery in Kitimat was killed when Liberal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault terminated the project’s environmental review. Once planned to process over 200,000 barrels of oil from Alberta per day, the project is now dead in the water.

Pacific Future Energy was originally slated to receive that oil via the shelved Northern Gateway pipeline, which many had hoped would be revived to build up Canada’s sovereign east-west energy infrastructure—the kind Carney has hinted he would support.

After weeks of being asked, Carney finally stated last week that he has entertained the “concept” of an east-west pipeline in Canada—whatever that is intended to fool people into believing. And he continues to tell Quebec something entirely different.

Liberal MPs backing Carney, like François-Philippe Champagne, have hinted that they may now also support new crude oil pipelines in eastern Canada. Chrystia Freeland, Carney’s closest competitor in the leadership race, has announced she supports exporting LNG, though she is unlikely to win.

Carney has the money and backing to lock up the Liberal leadership race and become prime minister, surrounded by the same cabinet ministers who have held back Canada from becoming the energy superpower it deserves to be.

We all know Carney supports pipelines—so long as they are not located in Canada.

When he wasn’t overseeing the shifting of jobs to the United States as chair of Brookfield Asset Management, Carney was signing off on investments in oil projects abroad while denouncing them in Canada.

Natural gas is one of the cleanest petroleum-derived sources of energy on the planet, and Canada has an abundance of it—one that is not paired with the infrastructure to extract and export it. 

Indigenous nations like the Haisla on the British Columbia coast are leading the way in changing that, soon to be followed by the Squamish with Woodfibre LNG and the Nisga’a with PRGT in partnership with leading members of the energy industry.

This is genuine reconciliation, and it is being intertwined with national economic prosperity. Both are on the chopping block if Carney becomes PM.

There has never been a more dire moment for ironclad commitments to fulfilling Canada’s promise as an energy superpower. If would-be politicians cannot bring themselves to support it now, they will not once they gain power.

At his Canada First rally last Saturday, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre gave his full-throated support for expanding the Canadian energy sector. The contrast could not be clearer.

Do not be fooled by half-hearted platitudes and non-answers. The federal election will make obvious who supports abundant energy and who aspires for Canada to be a laggard.

Geoff Russ is a policy manager in the resource sector and contributor to several national publications across Canada, the United States, and Australia. Read his work in the National Post, the Spectator Australia, and Modern Age.

There's no solving for Canada's cost of living crisis -- or tariff crisis -- without growing Canada's resource economy, and restrictions on our energy sector have proven themselves to be just another tax on working families. Help us advocate on your behalf, and on behalf of our Great Canadian energy producers and innovators.

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