Gwyn Morgan argues that Mark Carney, despite his polished image and rhetorical shift on energy, remains ideologically aligned with the Trudeau-era net-zero agenda that stifled Canada’s energy sector and economic growth. Morgan contends that without removing emissions caps and embracing real infrastructure investment, Canada’s recovery will remain a mirage — not a reality.
Pete Townshend’s famous lyrics, “Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss,” aptly describe Canada’s new prime minister. Touted as a fresh start after the Justin Trudeau years, Mark Carney has promised to turn Canada into a “clean and conventional energy superpower.” But despite the lovey-dovey atmosphere at Carney’s recent meeting with Canada’s premiers, Canadians should not be fooled. His sudden apparent openness to new energy pipelines masks a deeper continuity, in my opinion: Carney remains just as ideologically committed to net-zero emissions.
Carney’s carefully choreographed scrapping of the consumer carbon tax before April’s election helped reduce gasoline prices and burnished his centrist image. In fact, he simply moved Canada’s carbon taxes “upstream”, onto manufacturers and producers, where they can’t be seen by voters. Those taxes will, of course, be largely passed back onto consumers in the form of higher prices for virtually everything. Many consumers will blame “greedy” businesses rather than the real villain, even as more and more Canadian companies and projects are rendered uncompetitive, leading to further reductions in capital investment, closing of beleaguered factories and facilities, and lost jobs.
This sleight-of-hand is hardly surprising. Carney spent years abroad in a career combining finance and eco-zealotry, co-founding the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and serving as the UN’s Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. Both roles centred on pressuring institutions to stop investing in carbon-intensive industries – foremost among them oil and natural gas. Now, he speaks vaguely of boosting energy production while pledging to maintain Trudeau’s oil and natural gas emissions cap – a contradiction that renders new pipeline capacity moot.
Canada doesn’t need a rhetorical energy superpower. It needs real growth. Our economy has just endured a lost decade of sluggish overall growth sustained mainly by a surging population, declining per-capita GDP and a doubling of the national debt. A genuine recovery requires the kind of private-sector capital investment and energy infrastructure that Trudeau suppressed. That means lifting the emissions cap, clearing regulatory bottlenecks and building pipelines that connect our resources to global markets.
We can’t afford not to do this. The oil and natural gas industry’s “extraction” activities contribute $70 billion annually to Canada’s GDP; surrounding value-added activities add tens of billions more. The industry generates $35 billion in annual royalties and supports 900,000 direct and indirect jobs. Oil and natural gas also form the backbone of Canada’s export economy, representing nearly $140 billion per year, or about 20 percent of our balance of trade.
Yet Quebec still imports oil from Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria because Ottawa won’t push for a pipeline connecting western Canada’s producing fields to Quebec and the Maritimes. Reviving the cancelled Energy East pipeline would overcome this absurdity and give Canadian crude access to European consuming markets.
Carney has hinted at supporting such a project but refuses to address the elephant in the room: without scrapping the emissions cap, there won’t be enough production growth to justify new infrastructure. So pipeline CEOs shouldn’t start ordering steel pipe or lining up construction crews just yet.
I continue to believe that Carney remains beholden to the same global green orthodoxy that inspired Trudeau’s decade of economic sabotage. While the United States shifts course on climate policy, pulling out of the Paris Accord, abandoning EV mandates and even investigating GFANZ itself, Canada is led by a man at the centre of those systems. Carney’s internationalist career and personal life – complete with multiple citizenships and a spouse known for environmental activism – underscore how far removed he is from ordinary Canadians.
Carney’s version of “clean energy” also reveals his bias. Despite the fact that 82 percent of Canada’s electricity already comes from non-greenhouse-gas-emitting sources like hydro and nuclear, Carney seems fixated on wind and solar-generated power. These options are less reliable and more expensive – though more ideologically fashionable. To climate zealots, not all zero-emission energy is created equal.
Even now, after all the damage that’s been done, Canada has the potential to resume a path to prosperity. We are blessed with vast natural resources and skilled workers. But no economy can thrive under perpetual policy uncertainty, regulatory obstruction and ideological hostility to its core industries. Energy projects worth an estimated $500 billion were blocked during the Trudeau years. That capital won’t return unless there is clarity and confidence in the government’s direction.
Some optimists argue that Carney is ultimately a political opportunist who may shift pragmatically to boost the economy. But those of us who have seen this movie before are sceptical. During my time as a CEO in the oil and natural gas sector, I witnessed Justin’s father Pierre Trudeau try to dismantle our industry under the guise of progress. Carney, despite or perhaps because of his polish, may be the most dangerous of the three.
Todayville is a digital media and technology company. We profile unique stories and events in our community. Register and promote your community event for free.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order moving marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III controlled substance, despite many Republican lawmakers urging him not to.
“I want to emphasize that the order I am about to sign is not the legalization [of] marijuana in any way, shape, or form – and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug,” Trump said. “It’s never safe to use powerful controlled substances in recreational manners, especially in this case.”
“Young Americans are especially at risk, so unless a drug is recommended by a doctor for medical reasons, just don’t do it,” he added. “At the same time, the facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered.”
Under the Controlled Substances Act, Schedule I drugs are defined as having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use. Schedule III drugs – such as anabolic steroids, ketamine, and testosterone – are defined as having a moderate potential for abuse and accepted medical uses.
Although marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, 24 states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized marijuana within their borders, while 13 other states allow for medical marijuana.
Advocates for easing marijuana restrictions argue it will accelerate scientific research on the drug and allow the commercial marijuana industry to boom. Now that marijuana is no longer a Schedule I drug, businesses will claim an estimated $2.3 billion in tax breaks.
Chair of The Marijuana Policy Project Betty Aldworth said the reclassification “marks a symbolic victory and a recalibration of decades of federal misclassification.”
“Cannabis regulation is not a fringe experiment – it is a $38 billion economic engine operating under state-legal frameworks in nearly half of the country that has delivered overall positive social, educational, medical, and economic benefits, including correlation with reductions in youth use in states where it’s legal,” Aldworth said.
Opponents of the reclassification, including 22 Republican senators who sent Trump a warning letter Wednesday, point out the negative health impact of marijuana use and its effects on occupational and road safety.
“The only winners from rescheduling will be bad actors such as Communist China, while Americans will be left paying the bill. Marijuana continues to fit the definition of a Schedule I drug due to its high potential for abuse and its lack of an FDA-approved use,” the lawmakers wrote. “We cannot reindustrialize America if we encourage marijuana use.”
Marijuana usage is linked to mental disorders like depression, suicidal ideation, and psychotic episodes; impairs driving and athletic performance; and can cause permanent IQ loss when used at a young age, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration.
Additionally, research shows that “people who use marijuana are more likely to have relationship problems, worse educational outcomes, lower career achievement, and reduced life satisfaction,” SAMHA says.
Canadians are told dairy farmers need protection. The newest numbers tell a different story
Every once in a while, someone inside a tightly protected system decides to say the quiet part out loud. That is what Joel Fox, a dairy farmer from the Trenton, Ont., area, did recently in the Ontario Farmer newspaper.
In a candid open letter, Fox questioned why established dairy farmers like himself continue to receive increasingly large government payouts, even though the sector is not shrinking but expanding. For readers less familiar with the system, supply management is the federal framework that controls dairy production through quotas and sets minimum prices to stabilize farmer income.
His piece, titled “We continue to privatize gains, socialize losses,” did not come from an economist or a critic of supply management. It came from someone who benefits from it. Yet his message was unmistakable: the numbers no longer add up.
Fox’s letter marks something we have not seen in years, a rare moment of internal dissent from a system that usually speaks with one voice. It is the first meaningful crack since the viral milk-dumping video by Ontario dairy farmer Jerry Huigen, who filmed himself being forced to dump thousands of litres of perfectly good milk because of quota rules. Huigen’s video exposed contradictions inside supply management, but the system quickly closed ranks until now. Fox has reopened a conversation that has been dormant for far too long.
In his letter, Fox admitted he would cash his latest $14,000 Dairy Direct Payment Program cheque, despite believing the program wastes taxpayer money. The Dairy Direct Payment Program was created to offset supposed losses from trade agreements like the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement (CUSMA).
During those negotiations, Ottawa promised compensation because the agreements opened a small share of Canada’s dairy market, roughly three to five per cent, to additional foreign imports. The expectation was that this would shrink the domestic market. But those “losses” were only projections based on modelling and assumptions about future erosion in market share. They were predictions, not actual declines in production or demand. In reality, domestic dairy demand has strengthened.
Which raises the obvious question: why are we compensating dairy farmers for producing less when they are, in fact, producing more?
This month, dairy farmers received another one per cent quota increase, on top of several increases totalling four to five per cent in recent years. Quota only goes up when more milk is needed.
If trade deals had actually harmed the sector, quota would be going down, not up. Instead, Canada’s population has grown by nearly six million since 2015, processors have expanded and consumption has held steady. The market is clearly expanding.
Understanding what quota is makes the contradiction clearer. Quota is a government-created financial asset worth $24,000 to $27,000 per kilogram of butterfat. A mid-sized dairy farm may hold about $2.5 million in quota. Over the past few years, cumulative quota increases of five per cent or more have automatically added $120,000 to $135,000 to the value of a typical farm’s quota, entirely free.
Larger farms see even greater windfalls. Across the entire dairy system, these increases represent hundreds of millions of dollars in newly created quota value, likely exceeding $500 million in added wealth, generated not through innovation or productivity but by a regulatory decision.
That wealth is not just theoretical. Farm Credit Canada, a federal Crown corporation, accepts quota as collateral. When quota increases, so does a farmer’s borrowing power. Taxpayers indirectly backstop the loans tied to this government-manufactured asset. The upside flows privately; the risk sits with the public.
Yet despite rising production, rising quota values, rising equity and rising borrowing capacity, Ottawa continues issuing billions in compensation. Between 2019 and 2028, nearly $3 billion will flow to dairy farmers through the Dairy Direct Payment Program. Payments are based on quota holdings, meaning the largest farms receive the largest cheques. New farmers, young farmers and those without quota receive nothing. Established farms collect compensation while their asset values grow.
The rationale for these payments has collapsed. The domestic market did not shrink. Quota did not contract. Production did not fall. The compensation continues only because political promises are easier to maintain than to revisit.
What makes Fox’s letter important is that it comes from someone who gains from the system. When insiders publicly admit the compensation makes no economic sense, policymakers can no longer hide behind familiar scripts. Fox ends his letter with blunt honesty: “These privatized gains and socialized losses may not be good for Canadian taxpayers … but they sure are good for me.”
Canada is not being asked to abandon its dairy sector. It is being asked to face reality. If farmers are producing more, taxpayers should not be compensating them for imaginary declines. If quota values keep rising, Ottawa should not be writing billion-dollar cheques for hypothetical losses.
Fox’s letter is not a complaint; it is an opportunity. If insiders are calling for honesty, policymakers should finally be willing to do the same.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois is a Canadian professor and researcher in food distribution and policy. He is senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University and co-host of The Food Professor Podcast. He is frequently cited in the media for his insights on food prices, agricultural trends, and the global food supply chain.
Troy Media empowers Canadian community news outlets by providing independent, insightful analysis and commentary. Our mission is to support local media in helping Canadians stay informed and engaged by delivering reliable content that strengthens community connections and deepens understanding across the country.
