What Canada’s Conservative Climate Plan Should Have Said

I write this as the dread shadow of the Liberal budget begins to steal across the Canadian landscape and the chill vibrations from that dire document frost an already shivering populace. (I suppose I could say I’m writing this on Sunday night, but where’s the fun in that?)

I thought it might be a mildly useful exercise before the budget eats all space and time in the news universe to put out a proposed energy policy — for any party that wants it, or any party that needs one (hint — CPC).

The points are simple and plain, and in a sane Canada, much of what I propose would already be fact and reality.

Sanity and its brother realism are both, alas, a diminishing presence in a world ravaged by COVID-19, a world in despair of its leaders, mistrustful of much media, and weary to exhaustion from dubious and arbitrary lockdowns.

It is therefore with a feeble hope that the following thoughts and suggestions will receive any home in the pollster-massaged councils of any national party. Yet here they are.

Get off the climate-change bandwagon. That is the principal recommendation.

Any national party’s energy policy should be in support of what Canada already has in abundance. It should declare an end to the persecution of Alberta’s energy.

It should abandon the tantalizing fantasy of a magic fluorescence of the promise of future green jobs, and attend to the reality of those already present in Canada’s superlative energy industry.

Canada must get off the climate crusade merry-go-round. As long as China and India refuse to contemplate slowing their development, what Canada does is nugatory; it is useless. It is without logic or effect.

We should be clear on where we are. On energy, the policy should be direct: No carbon tax, of any variety or description or half-clever misdescription of a carbon tax, until such time as Canada has East and West pipelines.

A change of priority is also needed — the national government should state unequivocally its public support for Canadian energy, and that buttressing Canadian products and the industry as a whole is a top concern.

Oil or gas from all countries whose practices are not equivalent to Canada’s in maintaining environmental standards must carry a tariff.

Canadian industry, in keeping its energy development clear and in line with best environmental politics, should not suffer a cost/production disadvantage with foreign competitors, who operate more cheaply because they bypass accepted practices.

The rule should be: don’t come in here unless you have the same standards as we apply to our own producers.

Our national energy industry has been under a hail of misfortune. Therefore, a program dedicated exclusively to displaced or unemployed oil and gas workers should also be an immediate national priority.

Alberta should also be offered the opportunity to begin some rearrangement of transfer payments and assured that its interests will not be put in opposition to extraneous concerns.

For example, any trendy “green push” by a national government must clearly demonstrate it offers no detriment or is not being used as an opportunity to degrade the value of our energy sector.

Provide compensation to farmers, who need fuel to protect their harvests. Agriculture should not be carrying a levy to “fight global warming.” Food is not a luxury.

Finally, it is well past time to speak with a national voice when countering the campaigns of outside protesters or those who focus their anti-warming propaganda overwhelmingly on Fort McMurray’s oilsands and Albertan energy. A nation stands up for its members.

One element we may be sure of, even before this two-year delayed budget, is that Canada will need a real economy very soon, not one predicated on scare scenarios of “existential” doom, but on the maximum development of resources, we know we have.

There is a massive, unprecedented debt to be met, and after the destruction of so much of the Canadian economy — yet to be measured and hardly discussed — it will take the full engine of business, industry, and Canada’s working population to bring the country back to some sane and safe equilibrium.

The money that has been flowing out of federal and provincial governments during the past year in currents that rival the Niagara deluge has brought a false sense of ease.

Once COVID ends and financial reality returns, all of us are in for a hard time. This is the worst possible moment to indulge in wilful projections of a “great reset.”

Read rest at National Post