Now Is The Time To Unleash Canada's Energy Potential

By Geoff Russ, Special to the National Citizens Coalition and the 'Energy Affordability Now' Campaign

The wealth of Canada’s past and present is built on natural resources. Like the fur trade in the 1600s and the petroleum industry today, the land is how we move forward into a richer and more hopeful future.

Many do not see that, or refuse to. If they get their way, Canadian children will inherit less than their parents enjoyed at the same age. A country whose people can feel their standard of living declining is doomed.

Without energy that is plentiful and low-cost, that grim future is certain.

A Canada that is not only wealthier but stronger uplifts everyone who lives here. For that to happen, we need leadership that not only supports an ironclad energy sector but makes embracing it into a first principle.

The tariffs threatened by Donald Trump were just barely avoided at the eleventh hour, and the national mood has never been so eager to strengthen Canada’s position on this continent.

Infrastructure is needed now, and vast amounts of it. That means starting new pipelines, more LNG terminals, and fresh energy projects, including nuclear SMRs. It all must become a national priority.

It is not realistic or beneficial to treat the United States as our enemy, but we should not shy away from defending our economy in the wake of a more aggressive, nationalistic White House. The problem for Canada is not that we export too much energy to the U.S., but that Canadian exports cannot get anywhere else in meaningful amounts.

Our competitive advantage as a country cannot solely be our long, free-flowing border with the U.S. We must also have the ability to move our resources easily across the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans.

Selling our energy abroad is just as important as supplying the grid here at home.

When oil does reach overseas markets by Canadian pipelines, it is a modest amount flowing through the Trans Mountain pipeline to the Pacific. The vast majority must still flow through pipeline networks in the U.S. These flows can be shut off or tariffed with the stroke of a pen in the Oval Office, as Canadians have been rather rudely reminded over the past few months.

Canada may be one of the only major energy producers in the world that must rely on another country just to get most of its petroleum to a port, at an added cost. If this episode of tariffs and Trump gives Canadians anything beyond anxiety, it is a clear picture of just how absurdly bare-bones our energy network is.

The benefits of fixing that will be felt at home. More exports mean more revenue for Canada, thousands of new jobs in construction, and long-term employment in the energy sector.

Right now, it is still far too difficult to get anything built in Canada, something we were once proficient in. The Trans Mountain expansion itself barely survived the delays and weight of regulations imposed on the project. Energy East, intended to connect Western oil to Eastern refineries, died on a bed of red tape in 2017.

Even LNG projects, which have the environmental benefit of replacing high-emitting coal power, require a crusade to get approved, let alone completed. That is a shame because a strong energy sector helps all Canadians get ahead, not just those employed in it.

More revenue reduces the need for higher taxes and further borrowing. It also creates higher wages, with the petroleum industry paying some of the highest salaries in Canada.

An abundance of energy means spending less on fuel, home heating, and everyday essentials, leaving more for your children’s education and other family priorities.

Regrettably, not everyone believes in this path to a better future. Some want Canada to leave abundant energy behind and transform the economy into one driven purely by high-tech and finance. Mark Carney is their new idol, and his coronation as Liberal leader and our prime minister is nearly assured.

The only relief is that the upcoming federal election can render his time in the prime minister’s office as minimal.

Carney’s handlers have worked very hard to shape his image into something he is not. "Rockstar" and "outsider" are all fabricated labels that Carney’s backers have astroturfed into existence. Justin Trudeau’s top operators, like Gerald Butts and Katie Telford, are all behind him.

Does anyone expect they would throw their lot in with Carney if he did not agree with them on nearly everything the Liberals have done in government since 2015? Choosing Carney as leader is doubling down on all the bad policy and bad ideas that helped break Canada, simply costumed with a banker’s suit.

Until he ran for Liberal leader, Mark Carney was the chair of Brookfield Asset Management, the latest in his long career in banking and finance. He is comfortable in corporate boardrooms but would stick out like a sore thumb in the Albertan oil fields or British Columbia’s LNG terminals.

Carney’s idea of a green transition means turning the economy into something resembling those boardrooms, even if it means tearing Canada away from the historical industries that sustain it to this day.

Carney has a steady track record of advocating for the erosion of the petroleum industry in favour of unreliable wind and solar energy, but only in high-income countries like Canada. He has had little issue with investment in petroleum products in South America.

Noticeably, his old employers at Brookfield ended up acquiring energy assets in Britain soon after the Labour government, which he had advised, began winding down oil operations in the North Sea.

Canada is not Seoul or London, the latter being a place Carney could easily return to and resume advising the British Labour government once his brief political career in Canada is finished. He does, after all, openly identify as European.

The Labour government would surely take him back as they pursue the weakening of Britain's energy sector.

There is much to love about Europe, but its economic advisors are not among them. That being said, Europe still needs Canadian LNG, and we should supply them, both as an economic boon for us and as a moral imperative to support European democracies shifting away from Russian gas.

However, if we continue to delay, we will be left behind. Continuing to exist as a self-defeating energy superpower is unacceptable, and Canadians should demand better from their leaders.

There is no further room for excuses when it comes to building a better future. The energy sector is not just a part of our economy, it is the foundation of our standard of living. When we embrace it, everyone wins.

Now is the time to unleash our potential.

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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