Joe Oliver: Rhetoric and MOUs don’t make us an energy superpower

The Alberta-Ottawa agreement seems promising but doesn't yet move the country closer to realizing its energy potentialYou can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account.Though superficially promising, last month’s “memorandum of understanding” between Alberta and Ottawa is in fact restrictive and self-contradictory, leaving the over-arching economic and strategic question of Canada’s future energy development mired in uncertainty.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.Questionable support for pipelines from the prime minister and his energy minister, obstructive laws and regulations, and at least implied vetoes for the provinces and Indigenous communities alternate with resource superpower cheerleading to create an incoherent policy environment.The fog may be understandable but it is not justifiable. Mark Carney is trying to reconcile the irreconcilable: on the one hand, harsh economic reality and his own campaign promises and, on the other, a restive Liberal caucus, alarmed environmental activists and his personal climate obsessions. Will potential pipeline sponsors be willing to pour billions of dollars into such a fraught, dilatory and costly political and regulatory environment? Gwyn Morgan, former president and CEO of Encana, certainly doesn’t think so, as he indicated in a recent Leaders on the Frontier podcast.In the MOU, Canada and Alberta agree to “unlock and grow natural resource production and transportation in Western Canada” but also “remain committed to achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” They will reach carbon neutrality by “in part, reducing the emissions intensity of Canadian heavy oil production to best-in-class in terms of the average for heavy oil.” And they say they will attain net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for the electricity sector by 2050.Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder.The next issue of Top Stories will soon be in your inbox.We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try againInterested in more newsletters? Browse here.The MOU also commits Alberta to increasing its industrial carbon price to $130/tonne for large emitters by next April. That goes in precisely the opposite direction of the U.S. and will make Canada increasingly uncompetitive with its major trading partner and energy customer.The MOU seriously oversells the means to achieving clean oil and gas, to put it charitably. Carbon capture, utilization and storage is a key part of how Alberta wins Ottawa’s support for energy development. But it’s still an unproven and hugely expensive technology at large scale and only impacts upstream activities, i.e., extraction, upgrading and processing. They only account for a fifth to a quarter of Canada’s total life-cycle CO2 emissions. The rest comes from downstream combustion as fuel is burned in cars, trucks, planes and furnaces. Ottawa’s vision of “carbon-neutral” oil or gas is therefore an illusion.Despite her public enthusiasm for the MOU, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith must be galled by having to commit to net zero. She has to know it’s unachievable, would be prohibitively expensive to try to achieve, and, even if it were attained, would have a minuscule impact on global emissions and bring no measurable change in global temperatures. No serious person pretends Canada is able to lower global temperatures, no matter how much growth we sacrifice or cost we incur.Yet another reason to regret Alberta’s coerced climate commitment is growing recognition that global warming “will not lead to humanity’s demise,” as Bill Gates himself has now acknowledged. Net zero is being rejected around the world as unfit for purpose and disproportionately harmful to the poorest people in the poorest countries. In a brilliant article in The Spectator, Matt Ridley recently commemorated “The End of the Climate Cult.”Mark Carney apparently did not get the memo, although he almost certainly has seen that the latest Nanos tracking numbers, which rank the environment only sixth on Canadians’ list of top concerns, with just 5.1 per cent of respondents putting it first.To top off the futility of it all, Canada’s performance on the climate file is judged very poorly.

The World Population Review’s Climate Change Performance Index placed Canada 58th out of 63 countries, even behind the U.S. (whose president repudiates climate change as a scam) and China (which starts building a new coal-fired power plant on average every two weeks). Further confirming Canada’s sullied climate reputation, we were awarded the satirical “fossil of the day” title at COP30 in Brazil. If only it were merited!For more than a decade now, the Liberals’ misguided climate alarmism has done serious harm to Canadians both in costs borne and economic opportunities foregone. Their recent political about-faces, while welcome, need to be followed up with concrete results. Otherwise, Canadians will conclude Mark Carney’s newfound desire to exploit our immense energy treasures in the national interest is no more sincere than his predecessor’s many performative gestures.Joe Oliver was the minister of natural resources and finance in the Harper government.Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.