Business
Base Policies on Reality – Not Myths, Models, Misinformation and Fearmongering

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Donald Trump and JD Vance have a mandate on energy, economic, immigration and other issues that won them 50% of popular, 58% of electoral and 82% of US county votes.
On January 20 they will begin tackling the numerous problems bequeathed them by the Biden-Harris Administration and Washington Deep State: illegal immigration of criminals, terrorists and opportunists; outrageous government spending by bloated federal agencies; wars and crises across the globe; and federal and state politicians and bureaucrats determined to slow or stymie their every move.
Mr. Trump will let the DOGE out, to cut government waste. Pundits and political pros are offering advice across the board. My suggestions center on the “climate crisis” and the destructive policies it has justified.
1. First and foremost, withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate straitjacket. Its terms and subsequent agreements require that the USA and other industrialized nations switch from fossil fuels to “clean renewable” energy and de-modernize agricultural and other practices, to eliminate “greenhouse gas” (GHG) emissions. That would bring blackouts, de-industrialization and job losses.
It would also mean now-rich nations must pay developing countries $300 billion per year for climate damage “compensation” and renewable energy financing. But China, India and other developing countries need not cut emissions and will continue using coal, oil and natural gas in ever-increasing quantities, to modernize, create vibrant economies and lift more people out of poverty. That would mean even zero fossil fuel use by Western nations would not reduce global atmospheric GHG levels at all.
Better yet, send the Paris document to Congress for Article II Senate advice and two-thirds consent. President Obama’s sly move of calling this accord a mere “agreement” that required no Senate “treaty” review cannot be countenanced. Paris was among the most far-reaching, impactful agreements in US history. It affects our energy, economy, jobs, living standards, healthcare, national security and more. It’s a treaty and should be treated as such.
2. Equally important, eliminate the institutionalized junk science, assertions and fearmongering that fossil fuel use has caused an existential climate crisis for people and planet. Begin by re-examining the 2009 Obama Environmental Protection Agency “Endangerment Finding” that carbon dioxide “pollution” threatens the American people’s health and welfare.
Fossil fuels provide 80% of America’s energy; raw materials for thousands of petrochemical products; and the foundation of our economy, health and welfare. Their emissions certainly contribute to the 0.04% CO2 in Earth’s atmosphere, but this miracle molecule enables and spurs plant growth, thereby feeding the animal kingdom and making nearly all life possible.
EPA’s convoluted finding defied science and reality. It allowed the Obama and Biden Administrations to justify biased climate “research,” anti-fossil fuel regulations, sprawling wind and solar installations, and the transformation of America’s entire energy system and economy.
The Endangerment Decision was likely the most “major federal action” in US history, yet it has no real statutory basis. It clearly defies the Supreme Court’s decisions in West Virginia v. EPA, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council and Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc., v. Raimondo.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin should direct the agency to formally and publicly reexamine the secretive process that EPA employed to ensure its “endangerment” decision – with no contrarian science, evidence, questions or public hearings permitted to challenge its preordained edict. A fair, balanced, scientific review would demolish the faulty Finding and bring the agency into compliance with SCOTUS rulings.
The President-elect’s appointment of energy and environmental “czars” and National Energy Council will build on those important steps, help restore reality and common sense to America’s energy and climate policies, rein in other Biden-era regulations and executive actions, and advance Mr. Trump’s promise of US energy dominance and economic resurgence.
Other actions the new Administration and Congress should take include the following.
3. Utilize the Congressional Review Act to reverse eleventh-hour Biden-Harris regulatory sprees – such as its ban on further coal leasing in the Powder River Basin.
4. Open all US non-National-Park areas for no/low impact evaluation and exploration, to identify prospects warranting more detailed assessments for critically needed metals and minerals. Most of these public land areas were deliberately made off-limits to such evaluations by Congress, courts and the Deep State, making it impossible to weigh surface values against potential for world-class subsurface deposits.
China’s recent ban on exports of several vital metals and minerals underscores yet again why America must not rely on adversaries for raw materials critical for US defense, aerospace, battery, AI, wind, solar and other industries – especially when those materials could be found and developed in America, under the world’s best pollution control and environmental protection rules, technologies and practices.
5. Reopen the Delaware-sized “coastal plain” of Alaska’s South-Carolina-sized Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing, exploration and drilling. Congressional legislation in 2017 explicitly allowed those activities, but President Biden unilaterally cancelled all leases and permits in 2023.
6. Require that applicants for climate change research and modeling grants demonstrate that their previous models and studies have been confirmed by actual temperature, drought and extreme weather data and evidence; and provide computer codes and analyses so that reviewers can view and evaluate their work.
7. Define “sustainability” to reflect complete global life-cycle raw material requirements, mining and processing needs and impacts, energy required to produce raw materials and manufacture energy and other systems, and land, air and water pollution resulting from all those activities. This will ensure that wind, solar, battery, electric vehicle and other technologies are not classified as “clean, renewable and sustainable” merely because they don’t emit CO2 or pollution after they start operating.
8. End subsidies and fast-track permitting for wind and solar installations – especially offshore wind, where raw material requirements and costs are many times higher than for onshore turbines and far more excessive than that for combined-cycle gas generators.
9. Require that wind and solar projects, and associated backup battery and transmission line projects, meet the same environmental review standards and requirements as required for oil, gas, coal and metals mining, and nuclear projects, regarding local, regional and global air and water pollution, land and habitat destruction, wildlife disturbance and loss, and post-project equipment removal and land reclamation.
Even better, cancel the entire offshore wind program. Its electricity is weather-dependent and ultra-expensive, threatens wildlife and fisheries, and requires unjustifiable amounts of raw materials.
10. Expand and streamline programs to bring new nuclear power plants online, especially small modular reactors – to meet rapidly expanding needs for abundant, reliable, affordable electricity for data centers, artificial intelligence, and increasingly electrified households, technologies and industries.
11. Terminate Diversity Equity Inclusion, Environment Social Governance, and Environmental and Climate Justice programs, offices and funding. They only serve as twisted justifications for arbitrarily selecting preferred companies and communities that are often less qualified to serve public health and safety.
There is much more to be done. But this is a solid beginning for reducing or eliminating needless, excessive and harmful pseudo science, grants, policies, practices and regulations – and restoring government of, by and for the People.
Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
Alberta
COWBOY UP! Pierre Poilievre Promises to Fight for Oil and Gas, a Stronger Military and the Interests of Western Canada

Fr0m Energy Now
As Calgarians take a break from the incessant news of tariff threat deadlines and global economic challenges to celebrate the annual Stampede, Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre gave them even more to celebrate.
Poilievre returned to Calgary, his hometown, to outline his plan to amplify the legitimate demands of Western Canada and not only fight for oil and gas, but also fight for the interests of farmers, for low taxes, for decentralization, a stronger military and a smaller federal government.
Speaking at the annual Conservative party BBQ at Heritage Park in Calgary (a place Poilievre often visited on school trips growing up), he was reminded of the challenges his family experienced during the years when Trudeau senior was Prime Minister and the disastrous effect of his economic policies.
“I was born in ’79,” Poilievre said. “and only a few years later, Pierre Elliott Trudeau would attack our province with the National Energy Program. There are still a few that remember it. At the same time, he hammered the entire country with money printing deficits that gave us the worst inflation and interest rates in our history. Our family actually lost our home, and we had to scrimp and save and get help from extended family in order to get our little place in Shaughnessy, which my mother still lives in.”
This very personal story resonated with many in the crowd who are now experiencing an affordability crisis that leaves families struggling and young adults unable to afford their first house or condo. Poilievre said that the experience was a powerful motivator for his entry into politics. He wasted no time in proposing a solution – build alliances with other provinces with mutual interests, and he emphasized the importance of advocating for provincial needs.
“Let’s build an alliance with British Columbians who want to ship liquefied natural gas out of the Pacific Coast to Asia, and with Saskatchewanians, Newfoundlanders and Labradorians who want to develop their oil and gas and aren’t interested in having anyone in Ottawa cap how much they can produce. Let’s build alliances with Manitobans who want to ship oil in the port of Churchill… with Quebec and other provinces that want to decentralize our country and get Ottawa out of our business so that provinces and people can make their own decisions.”
Poilievre heavily criticized the federal government’s spending and policies of the last decade, including the increase in government costs, and he highlighted the negative impact of those policies on economic stability and warned of the dangers of high inflation and debt. He advocated strongly for a free-market economy, advocating for less government intervention, where businesses compete to impress customers rather than impress politicians. He also addressed the decade-long practice of blocking and then subsidizing certain industries. Poilievre referred to a famous quote from Ronald Reagan as the modus operandi of the current federal regime.
“The Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases. If anything moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”
The practice of blocking and then subsidizing is merely a ploy to grab power, according to Poilievre, making industry far too reliant on government control.
“By blocking you from doing something and then making you ask the government to help you do it, it makes you reliant. It puts them at the center of all power, and that is their mission…a full government takeover of our economy. There’s a core difference between an economy controlled by the government and one controlled by the free market. Businesses have to clamour to please politicians and bureaucrats. In a free market (which we favour), businesses clamour to impress customers. The idea is to put people in charge of their economic lives by letting them have free exchange of work for wages, product for payment and investment for interest.”
Poilievre also said he plans to oppose any ban on gas-powered vehicles, saying, “You should be in the driver’s seat and have the freedom to decide.” This is in reference to the Trudeau-era plan to ban the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, which the Carney government has said they have no intention to change, even though automakers are indicating that the targets cannot be met. He also intends to oppose the Industrial Carbon tax, Bill C-69 the Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-48 the Oil tanker ban, the proposed emissions cap which will cap energy production, as well as the single-use plastics ban and Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act and the proposed “Online Harms Act,” also known as Bill C-63. Poilievre closed with rallying thoughts that had a distinctive Western flavour.
“Fighting for these values is never easy. Change, as we’ve seen, is not easy. Nothing worth doing is easy… Making Alberta was hard. Making Canada, the country we love, was even harder. But we don’t back down, and we don’t run away. When things get hard, we dust ourselves off, we get back in the saddle, and we gallop forward to the fight.”
Cowboy up, Mr. Poilievre.
Maureen McCall is an energy professional who writes on issues affecting the energy industry.
Business
Carney’s new agenda faces old Canadian problems

From the Fraser Institute
In his June speech announcing a major buildup of Canada’s military, Prime Minister Mark Carney repeated his belief that this country faces a “hinge moment” of the sort the allied countries confronted after the Second World War.
A better comparison might be with the beginning of the war itself.
Then, the Allies found themselves at war with an autocratic state bent on their defeat and possible destruction. Now, Carney faces an antagonistic American president bent on annexing Canada through economic warfare.
Then, Canada rose to the challenge, creating the world’s third-largest navy and landing an army at Normandy on D-Day. Now, Carney has announced the most aggressive reorienting of Canada’s economic, foreign and defence policies in generations.
Polls show strong support among Canadians for this new agenda. But the old Canada is still there. It will fight back. It may yet win.
The situation certainly would have been more encouraging had Carney not inherited Justin Trudeau’s legacy of severe economic and environmental restrictions—picking economic winners and losers rather than letting the market decide—and chronic deficits. The new prime minister would do well to dismantle as much of that legacy as he can.
Some advocate a return to the more laissez-faire approach of Stephen Harper’s government. But Harper didn’t confront a belligerent president hoping to annex Canada through the “economic force” of tariff walls.
The prime minister succeeded in getting Bill C-5, which is intended to weaken at least some of the restrictions on resource development and infrastructure, passed into law. He and the premiers pledge to finally dismantle generations of internal trade and labour mobility barriers. If we must trade less with the Americans, we can at least learn to trade with ourselves.
And the prime minister deserves high praise for reversing decades of military decline through increased spending and efforts to improve procurement. If Carney accomplishes nothing more than restoring Canada’s defences, especially in the Arctic, he will be well remembered.
That said, major challenges confront the Carney agenda.
There’s much talk about a new national energy corridor. But what does that mean? One KPMG executive defined it as a “dedicated, streamlined pathway for the energy, electricity, decarbonization, transportation and digital infrastructure.”
Yes, but what does that mean?
Whatever it means, some First Nations will oppose it tooth-and-nail. Not all of them, mind you. The First Nations Major Project Coalition is dedicated to assisting First Nations in working with government and the private sector for the benefit of all. But many First Nations people consider resource development further exploitation of their ancestral lands by a colonizing power. At the first major proposal to which they do not buy in, they will take the government to court.
What investor will be willing to commit to a project that could be blocked for years as First Nations and Ottawa fight it out all the way to the Supreme Court?
The prime minister, formerly a fervent advocate of combatting climate change, now talks about developing “conventional energy,” which means oil and gas pipelines. But environmental activists will fiercely oppose those pipelines.
There is so much that could go wrong. Sweep away those internal trade barriers? Some premiers will resist. Accelerate housing development? Some mayors will resist. Expand exports to Europe and Asia? Some businesses and entrepreneurs will say it’s not worth the risk.
As for the massive increase in defence spending, where will the money come from? What will be next year’s deficit? What will be the deficit’s impact on inflation, interest rates and sovereign creditworthiness? The obstacles are high enough to make anyone wonder how much, if any, of the government’s platform will be realized. But other factors are at work as well, factors that were also present in 1939.
To execute his mandate, Carney is surrounding himself with what, back in the Second World War, were called “dollar a year men”—executives who came to Ottawa from the private sector to mobilize the economy for wartime.
In Carney’s case he has brought in Marc-André Blanchard as chief of staff and Michael Sabia as clerk of the privy council. Both are highly experienced in government and the private sector. Both are taking very large pay cuts because, presumably, they understand the gravity of the times and believe in the prime minister’s plans.
Most important, Carney’s agenda has broad support from a public that fears for the country’s future and will have little patience toward any group seeking to block the prime minister’s agenda.
Millions of Canadians want this government’s reform efforts to succeed. Those who would put it at risk of failing will have to contend with public anger. That gives Carney a shot at making real change.
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