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Canada wallows on LNG sidelines, paralyzed by Ottawa’s onerous regulatory system

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7 minute read

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Mitsotakis said Greece has built a major facility outside the city of Alexandroupolis to process incoming LNG tankers. He said Greece will pump LNG to the rest of Europe and needs more at home as the country abandons coal.

When it comes to fossil fuels, the world wants what Canada’s got. The problem is, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doesn’t care.

Fresh proof came with the recent visit of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the first Greek leader to come to Canada in more than 40 years.

According to the office of the Prime Minister Trudeau, Mitsotakis was simply here to march in Montreal’s Greek Independence Day Parade, discuss “shared interests” and cut the ribbon as Greece purchased Canadian-made firefighting planes.

But, during an interview with CTV, Mitsotakis said his country would “of course” like to start importing Canadian liquified natural gas (LNG).

“We are a big entry point for LNG, not just for the Greek market, but also for the Balkans, for Eastern Europe. Theoretically, we could even supply Ukraine,” said Mitsotakis.

“In principle, yes, we are very interested in obtaining LNG at competitive prices.”

Mitsotakis said Greece has built a major facility outside the city of Alexandroupolis to process incoming LNG tankers. He said Greece will pump LNG to the rest of Europe and needs more at home as the country abandons coal.

Much of Europe’s energy has traditionally come from Russia or Middle Eastern autocracies. More than a decade ago, author Ezra Levant made the case for Canada’s “Ethical Oil” as a better alternative. Canada’s status as a democratic state that respects human rights and extracts oil with a minimal environmental footprint is as good as it gets. Mitsotakis, a Harvard-educated investment banker, understands that quite readily today.

“Canada is a country (for) which we share so many values,” said Mitsotakis. “I think we see eye-to-eye on many of the challenges that we face.”

Still, there was no mention of energy exports in Trudeau’s public comments regarding Mitsotakis, nor in official government communications about the visit.

Mitsotakis can take little consolation that his treatment is not unusual, as true as that may be. In the past 18 months, both the Japanese prime minister and the German chancellor returned home without official assurances that Ottawa was eager to offer bulk quantities of Canadian LNG.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida came to Canada in January, 2023 making no secret of his “high expectations” to reach an LNG export agreement with Canada.

In August 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada hoping to reach an LNG deal. “Canada is our partner of choice,” Scholz said at the time.

Somehow, Trudeau said at a press conference with the German leader that there was no “business case” for LNG exports to Europe. Instead, he took the chancellor to an empty field in Newfoundland that was the chosen site for a future Canadian facility to export carbon-neutral hydrogen.

That will help Germany a little, but not nearly enough. The country turned to Qatar and signed a 15-year LNG export deal.

Canada is currently the world’s fifth largest producer of natural gas. But, as is the case with oil, facilities to sell it overseas are very limited. Canada has no LNG export facilities currently operating. Any LNG exports to Europe would have to go through a US export terminal.

Kitimat, BC will open a major export facility in early 2025, but plans to build an LNG pipeline to ports on the East Coast have fallen apart due to high costs.

On Monday, Alberta Energy Minister Brian Jean said “onerous” regulatory procedures were more to blame.

“With massive natural gas reserves, Canada can no longer wait on the LNG sidelines, burdened by an onerous regulatory system. Our allies and trading partners need us. We must have more LNG export facilities approved and built,” Jean said in a statement.

Jean is right. Canada has scuttled one opportunity after another during the Trudeau era, first by smothering pipeline development in onerous regulations. The Northern Gateway pipeline was the only one the nation banned, citing environmental concerns off the coast of northern B.C., despite the fact that 50 tankers passed the same waters every day with exports from Alaska.

Other proposals, such as the Energy East pipeline, were held up in red tape until its proponents decided the project wasn’t worth it. A 30,000-page application went for not, as did the hope that refineries in the Maritimes could refine Canadian products instead of those from the Middle East.

The trans mountain pipeline was also bound up until the government bought it, after which its progress still went painfully slowly. Years late and six times over-budget at a cost of $34 billion, the “long delayed” pipeline is finally ready for crude deliveries.

Bill C-69, dubbed by former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney as the “No More Pipelines Act”, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada last fall. The development is welcome but cannot restore lost time.

Canada remains poorly positioned to capitalize on another historic opportunity–the European thirst for oil as it tries to distance itself from Russia. Unfortunately, this problem seems more convenient to Ottawa than not. The Canadian government seems more interested in having zero carbon emissions even if that means zero economy. Too bad that makes zero sense.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

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Alberta

As President Trump creates new economy, Trudeau government ‘pandering’ to globalists

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Jordan Peterson in a February 5, 2025 video titled ‘Canada Must Offer Alberta More Than Trump Could’

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

“Enough idiot green moralizing, enough carbon tax. Enough bloody net-zero,” he said, adding, “how about this: enough multiculturalism and destruction of the Canadian identity.” 

Well-known Canadian psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson had choice words for Canadian politicians last week, accusing them of “pandering” to elites and ruining the nation.

In the February 5 video entirely dedicated to the topic of Canadian politics, Peterson said that he is sick of “pathetic celebrity wannabe” politicians, a category in which he includes Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who are “pandering” to the global elites at the expense of ordinary citizens.

Peterson, who is from Alberta, in particular defended his province from a continued push by the Liberal government to undermine its oil and gas industry, amidst a trade tariff dispute with the United States. 

“Enough overt and covert attempts to destroy the basis of the economy of my fair and hard-working province,” said Peterson. 

“Enough delaying critical infrastructure development and rejection of international trade offers for natural gas, oil, and coal. Enough treatment of the resource economy upon which Quebec in particular, so unacceptably depends as a moral pariah.” 

Peterson also took issue with Trudeau’s unpopular carbon tax and the Liberal government’s ongoing promotion of DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) ideology. 

“Enough idiot green moralizing, enough carbon tax. Enough bloody net-zero,” he said, adding, “how about this: enough multiculturalism and destruction of the Canadian identity.” 

In recent weeks, the Trudeau government has been embroiled in a trade dispute with U.S. President Donald Trump, the latter threatening to impose a 25 percent tariff on all Canadian goods if border security and fentanyl trafficking is not taken more seriously.

Canada was given a 30-day reprieve from the 25 percent tariffs by Trump after Trudeau promised to increase border security and crack down on fentanyl making its way south.  

Since taking office in 2015, the Trudeau government has continued to push a radical environmental agenda like the agendas being pushed by the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” and the United Nations’ “Sustainable Development Goals.”  

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been a fierce opponent of Trudeau’s green energy agenda and an advocate for the oil and gas industry.   

Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world, with most of it being in Alberta. Unlike in other nations, Alberta’s industry is largely considered ethical.

This is not the first time Peterson has accused Trudeau and his government of working against the interests of Canada.

Last year, Peterson formally announced his departure from Canada in favor of moving to the United States, saying his birth nation has become a “totalitarian hell hole.”  

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Energy

LATE TO THE PARTY: Liberal Resource Minister Minister Suddenly Discovers Canada Needs East-West Pipeline

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From Energy Now

By Jim Warren

On Thursday, February 6 federal energy and natural resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson told reporters about a brilliant idea he’d come up with. He said Canada should think about building an east-west oil pipeline. He claimed doing so could provide Ontario, Quebec and parts further east greater security of supply.

Furthermore, such a pipeline would eliminate the need to buy tanker loads of oil from places like Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. And what’s more it could provide us with the opportunity to export Canadian oil to countries other than the US.

Talk about being late to the party. It’s as though the Energy East project never made it onto the national agenda.

Wilkinson told reporters how a pipeline like Enbridge’s Line 5 is vulnerable to shut down by US authorities. Line 5 carries oil from the prairies through the northern US Midwest before delivering it to the refinery and petrochemicals facilities at Sarnia, Ontario.

This is not breaking news. The Liberals have been well aware of the threat for years. Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer waged a well-publicized multi-year campaign to have Line 5 shut down.

According to a CBC report, Wilkinson said, “successive Canadian governments never really gave it much thought that a lot of the energy the country needs to power its economy flows through the U.S.”

That’s a stretch. He apparently doesn’t consider the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan to be Canadian governments. The real problem is Ottawa wasn’t listening when premiers Notley, Kenney, Smith, Wall and Moe explained the value of an all-Canadian Energy East pipeline. They also had plenty to say about the cancellation of Energy East in 2017 and the role Ottawa played by creating the regulatory approval quagmire that helped kill it.

No less puzzling is that Wilkinson imagines such a pipeline could ever be built under the BANANAs (build absolutely nothing, anywhere, near anything) regulatory barriers implemented by the Liberals which make it next to impossible for anyone to build a new pipeline. When Jason Kenney referred to Bill C-69 as The No More Pipelines Bill he wasn’t just whistling Dixie.

The only major export pipeline to be built in the wake of C-69, was the Trans Mountain expansion (TMX). And it was only completed because the owner, the Government of Canada, was prepared to incur the staggering costs of navigating its own pipeline approval regulations. A pipeline originally budgeted to cost $6.8 billion wound up costing an additional $54 billion. Sane investors simply aren’t prepared to accept that level of unreasonable cost and uncertainty.

A first step in getting new pipelines built would be eliminating Bill C-69 along with Bill C-48, the West coast tanker ban. Wilkinson didn’t touch on those points when telling reporters about his bold new idea.

One has to wonder, after11 years of anti-oil and anti-pipeline policy making, if Wilkinson really means what he’s saying. Has he truly experienced a road to Damascus level conversion due to the threat of US tariffs?

Another plausible explanation for Wilkinson’s call for the resurrection of Energy East is that he’s seen the polling numbers. An Angus Reid poll conducted earlier this month shows 79% of Canadians from across the country support new oil and gas pipelines to tidewater on the east and west coasts. The poll also shows 74% of Quebec respondents now support the idea of building new pipelines to tidewater.

If those numbers hold, Canada’s next government could possibly revisit Energy East. If they succeeded in getting the line built it would represent the most visionary nation building project since the building of the trans-continental railway.

No less surprising is, despite the rise in public support for pipelines, Quebec Premier Francois Legault says he won’t accept a new oil pipeline in his province. Legault is out of step with Quebec opinion on more issues than pipelines. The separatist Parti Quebecois is currently leading Legault’s Coalition Avenir Quebec by 10 points in party preference polls. This is not to say the PQ is any more pipeline friendly.

After11 years of Liberal anti-oil and anti-pipeline policy making, Wilkinson is finally on the right side of the Energy East idea. Some might say better late than never—better to change one’s mind than to continue being wrong. Others will say it is a flip flop of epic proportions and questionable sincerity. Skeptical pundits will question whether Wilkinson’s new found fondness for pipelines is any more credible than Mark Carney’s pledge to get rid of the carbon tax.

Wilkinson is a bright man, so it is possible he has believed Energy East was a good idea for some time. Too bad he didn’t tell us sooner. He waited too long to come clean to expect electoral redemption.

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