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A federally guaranteed Indigenous loan program is reconciliation progress, but only if it respects Indigenous agency

Published

2 years ago

6 minute read

Roger Marten, right, Chief of Cold Lake First Nations, and Curtis Monias, centre, Chief of Heart Lake First Nation, speak after Cenovus CEO Alex Pourbaix announces an initiative focused on Indigenous communities. Photo from The Canadian Press.

From EnergyNow.ca

By Resource Works

Indigenous communities are increasingly becoming partners and owners in major natural resource projects across the country.

Resource Works has been excited to be involved in that movement through our annual Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase, where we convene Indigenous experts to discuss Indigenous partnerships in major projects and across the Canadian economy.

Under a proposed federal program, even more, Indigenous communities could become partners and even owners in major natural resource projects, from oil to natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG).

Back in 2010, the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat offered a 10% equity stake in the project to participating Indigenous groups. Yet despite having significant support, there was also considerable Indigenous opposition to the project. Ultimately, the project was killed when Prime Minister Trudeau banned oil tanker traffic on BC’s northern coast.

Fast forward twelve years, and the Coastal GasLink (CGL) natural gas pipeline and the LNG Canada project are nearing completion. In fact, CGL finished laying the last of its pipe in the ground in October 2023, completing a truly herculean engineering task, the first energy pipeline to the coast in decades. Despite some Indigenous opposition, CGL has the support of the elected councils of all 20 First Nations along the route and has offered an option for First Nations to purchase a 10% equity share in the pipeline.

Coastal GasLink will feed LNG Canada, the largest private sector investment in Canadian history. That project will turn CGL’s natural gas into liquid, where it can be shipped more densely to Asia to help replace coal, especially in industrial applications, and reduce global carbon emissions.

While CGL and LNG Canada near completion, two more proposals for LNG projects in BC are coming onto the scene. A historic first, these projects are led by First Nations: the Cedar LNG project near Kitimat from the Haisla Nation and Ksi Lisims LNG in Northern BC from the Nisga’a Nation.

A third LNG project, Woodfibre LNG, was approved by the Squamish Nation in the first-ever Indigenous environmental impact review and is now beginning construction.

Indigenous involvement – and leadership – in major energy projects has arrived. Indigenous LNG is Canadian LNG, and Canadian LNG has become Indigenous LNG. This is a global first.

Beyond natural gas and LNG, the Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project from Alberta to Burnaby is anticipating completion in March 2024. The expansion triples the pipeline’s capacity, the only oil pipeline to Canada’s West coast.

While there has been Indigenous opposition to this project, there has also been support, including formal agreements and billions in contracting deals for Indigenous businesses during construction. In fact, several Indigenous groups are working to acquire an equity stake in the pipeline.

Historic restrictions in the Indian Act mean Indigenous peoples face enormous barriers in raising or borrowing money to finance equity partnerships. Yet the ability to purchase equity in major projects is to enter the big leagues of economic development and wealth generation.

The federal government is expected to announce a guaranteed loan program that will enable Indigenous Peoples to finally bypass these structural obstacles and purchase equity shares in resource projects. Alberta and Saskatchewan already have their own programs, and the federal government has a lot to learn from them, particularly Alberta’s Alberta Indigenous Opportunities Corporation.

Supporters of such programs point out that Ottawa, without spending a cent of taxpayers’ money, could backstop loans to Indigenous communities. It’s a low-risk mechanism and another way to support economic reconciliation.

Unfortunately, there is uncertainty about whether this federal initiative will allow all projects to be supported. There are reports that Ottawa will exclude oil and gas projects from the guaranteed-loan program, in favour of exclusively renewable and green energy projects.

Indigenous groups argue that they can make up their own minds on what to invest in.

Four Indigenous groups have told the prime minister: “This program cannot be driven by an ‘Ottawa-knows-best’ policy approach – the judgement of Indigenous Nations about projects to pursue must be respected. . . . We believe that this initiative is not only a practical step towards reconciliation but an opportunity to demonstrate Canada’s commitment to a just future for First Peoples.”

If this loan program is created, it should be up to Indigenous peoples to decide what they want to get involved in. If we are in an era of reconciliation, shouldn’t we empower Indigenous Peoples to be decision-makers?

We can do big things as a country when we partner with Indigenous peoples. But we need to ground our policies in a positive framework that builds agency.

For many Indigenous peoples, that starts with charting their own economic destiny, including in natural resources.

Margareta Dovgal is Resource Works’ Managing Director and Event Lead for the Indigenous Partnerships Success Showcase

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Mortgaging Canada’s energy future — the hidden costs of the Carney-Smith pipeline deal

Published on December 21, 2025

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By Dan McTeague

Much of the commentary on the Carney-Smith pipeline Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) has focused on the question of whether or not the proposed pipeline will ever get built.

That’s an important topic, and one that deserves to be examined — whether, as John Robson, of the indispensable Climate Discussion Nexus, predicted, “opposition from the government of British Columbia and aboriginal groups, and the skittishness of the oil industry about investing in a major project in Canada, will kill [the pipeline] dead.”

But I’m going to ask a different question: Would it even be worth building this pipeline on the terms Ottawa is forcing on Alberta? If you squint, the MOU might look like a victory on paper. Ottawa suspends the oil and gas emissions cap, proposes an exemption from the West Coast tanker ban, and lays the groundwork for the construction of one (though only one) million barrels per day pipeline to tidewater.

But in return, Alberta must agree to jack its industrial carbon tax up from $95 to $130 per tonne at a minimum, while committing to tens of billions in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) spending, including the $16.5 billion Pathways Alliance megaproject.

Here’s the part none of the project’s boosters seem to want to mention: those concessions will make the production of Canadian hydrocarbon energy significantly more expensive.

As economist Jack Mintz has explained, the industrial carbon tax hike alone adds more than $5 USD per barrel of Canadian crude to marginal production costs — the costs that matter when companies decide whether to invest in new production. Layer on the CCUS requirements and you get another $1.20–$3 per barrel for mining projects and $3.60–$4.80 for steam-assisted operations.

While roughly 62% of the capital cost of carbon capture is to be covered by taxpayers — another problem with the agreement, I might add — the remainder is covered by the industry, and thus, eventually, consumers.

Total damage: somewhere between $6.40 and $10 US per barrel. Perhaps more.

“Ultimately,” the Fraser Institute explains, “this will widen the competitiveness gap between Alberta and many other jurisdictions, such as the United States,” that don’t hamstring their energy producers in this way. Producers in Texas and Oklahoma, not to mention Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, or Russia, aren’t paying a dime in equivalent carbon taxes or mandatory CCUS bills. They’re not so masochistic.

American refiners won’t pay a “low-carbon premium” for Canadian crude. They’ll just buy cheaper oil or ramp up their own production.

In short, a shiny new pipe is worthless if the extra cost makes barrels of our oil so expensive that no one will want them.

And that doesn’t even touch on the problem for the domestic market, where the higher production cost will be passed onto Canadian consumers in the form of higher gas and diesel prices, home heating costs, and an elevated cost of everyday goods, like groceries.

Either way, Canadians lose.

So, concludes Mintz, “The big problem for a new oil pipeline isn’t getting BC or First Nation acceptance. Rather, it’s smothering the industry’s competitiveness by layering on carbon pricing and decarbonization costs that most competing countries don’t charge.” Meanwhile, lurking underneath this whole discussion is the MOU’s ultimate Achilles’ heel: net-zero.

The MOU proudly declares that “Canada and Alberta remain committed to achieving Net-Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.” As Vaclav Smil documented in a recent study of Net-Zero, global fossil-fuel use has risen 55% since the 1997 Kyoto agreement, despite trillions spent on subsidies and regulations. Fossil fuels still supply 82% of the world’s energy.

With these numbers in mind, the idea that Canada can unilaterally decarbonize its largest export industry in 25 years is delusional.

This deal doesn’t secure Canada’s energy future. It mortgages it. We are trading market access for self-inflicted costs that will shrink production, scare off capital, and cut into the profitability of any potential pipeline. Affordable energy, good jobs, and national prosperity shouldn’t require surrendering to net-zero fantasy.If Ottawa were serious about making Canada an energy superpower, it would scrap the anti-resource laws outright, kill the carbon taxes, and let our world-class oil and gas compete on merit. Instead, we’ve been handed a backroom MOU which, for the cost of one pipeline — if that! — guarantees higher costs today and smothers the industry that is the backbone of the Canadian economy.

This MOU isn’t salvation. It’s a prescription for Canadian decline.

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Daily Caller

Paris Climate Deal Now Decade-Old Disaster

Published on December 21, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Steve Milloy

The Paris Climate Accord was adopted 10 years ago this week. It’s been a decade of disaster that President Donald Trump is rightly trying again to end.

The stated purpose of the agreement was for countries to voluntarily cut emissions to avoid the average global temperature exceeding the (guessed at) pre-industrial temperature by 3.6°F (2°C) and preferably 2.7°F (1.5°C).

Since December 2015, the world spent an estimated $10 trillion trying to achieve the Paris goals. What has been accomplished? Instead of reducing global emissions, they have increased about 12 percent. While the increase in emissions is actually a good thing for the environment and humanity, spending $10 trillion in a failed effort to cut emissions just underscores the agreement’s waste, fraud and abuse.

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But wasting $10 trillion is only the tip of the iceberg.

The effort to cut emissions was largely based on forcing industrial countries to replace their tried-and-true fossil fuel-based energy systems with not-ready-for-prime-time wind, solar and battery-based systems. This forced transition has driven up energy costs and made energy systems less reliable. The result of that has been economy-crippling deindustrialization in former powerhouses of Germany and Britain.

And it gets worse.

European nations imagined they could reduce their carbon footprint by outsourcing their coal and natural gas needs to Russia. That outsourcing enriched Russia and made the European economy dependent on Russia for energy. That vulnerability, in turn, and a weak President Joe Biden encouraged Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine.

The result of that has been more than one million killed and wounded, the mass destruction of Ukraine worth more than $500 billion so far and the inestimable cost of global destabilization. Europe will have to spend hundreds of billions more on defense, and U.S. taxpayers have been forced to spend hundreds of billions on arms for Ukraine. Putin has even raised the specter of using nuclear weapons.

President Barack Obama unconstitutionally tried to impose the Paris agreement on the U.S. as an Executive agreement rather than a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate. Although Trump terminated the Executive agreement during his first administration, President Joe Biden rejoined the agreement soon after taking office, pledging to double Obama’s emissions cuts pledge to 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.

Biden’s emissions pledge was an impetus for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act that allocated $1.2 trillion in spending for what Trump labeled as the Green New Scam. Although Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduced that spending by about $500 billion and he is trying to reduce it further through Executive action, much of that money was used in an effort to buy the 2024 election for Democrats. The rest has been and will be used to wreck our electricity grid with dangerous, national security-compromising wind, solar and battery equipment from Communists China.

Then there’s this. At the Paris climate conference in 2015, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stated quite clearly that emissions cuts by the U.S. and other industrial countries were meaningless and would accomplish nothing since the developing world’s emissions would be increasing.

Finally, there is the climate realism aspect to all this. After the Paris agreement was signed and despite the increase in emissions, the average global temperature declined during the years from 2016 to 2022, per NOAA data.

The super El Nino experienced during 2023-2024 caused a temporary temperature spike. La Nina conditions have now returned the average global temperature to below the 2015-2016 level, per NASA satellite data. The overarching point is that any “global warming” that occurred over the past 40 years is actually associated with the natural El Nino-La Nina cycle, not emissions.

The Paris agreement has been all pain and no gain. Moreover, there was never any need for the agreement in the first place. A big thanks to President Trump for pulling us out again.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer. He posts on X at @JunkScience.

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