In situ oil sands project in northern Alberta. Photo courtesy MEG Energy

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Deborah Jaremko

‘The oil sands are Canada’s winning lottery ticket’

As Alberta’s oil sands sector reaches a major economic milestone, a new report shows that emissions growth continues to slow.

There is a clear “structural break” for the industry where production growth is beginning to rise faster than emissions growth, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. While last year’s oil sands production was nine per cent higher than in 2019, total emissions rose by just three per cent.

“It’s not driven solely by slower production growth because production growth has continued. This is a notable, significant change in oil sands emissions,” said Kevin Birn, head of S&P Global’s Centre for Emissions Excellence.

Birn said that in many cases oil sands growth is coming from optimization, where for example instead of companies building new equipment to generate more steam to inject underground, they have found ways to produce more oil with the steam they already have.

Emissions per barrel, or so-called “emissions intensity” is now 28 per cent lower than it was in 2009.

Earlier this year, S&P Global raised its oil sands production outlook, now projecting the sector will reach 3.8 million barrels per day by 2030, compared to 3.2 million barrels per day in 2023.

Analysts continue to expect total oil sands emissions to peak in the next couple of years, absent the federal government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap.

“Certainly, there’s potential for that to occur later if there’s more volume than we anticipate, but it’s also the time when we start to see the potential for large-scale decarbonizations to emerge towards the end of this decade,” Birn said.

Meanwhile, before the end of this year the oil sands sector will hit approximately $1 trillion of cumulative spending over the last 25 years, according to a joint report by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and Pathways Alliance.

That is, not profits or dividends, but investment in operations, building new facilities, and government payments including taxes and royalties.

“The oilsands are Canada’s winning lottery ticket,” wrote MLI’s Heather Exner-Pirot and Pathways’ Bryan Remillard.

They noted that oil sands producers have paid more than $186 billion in royalties and taxes to Canadian governments, representing more than the last five years of Canadian defense spending.

“Far from just an Alberta success story, the oilsands are a quintessentially Canadian sector. More than 2,300 companies outside of Alberta have had direct business with the oilsands, including over 1,300 in Ontario and almost 600 in Quebec,” wrote Exner-Pirot and Remillard.

“That juggernaut could keep Canada’s economy prosperous for many more decades, providing the feedstock for chemicals and carbon-based materials whenever global fuel consumption starts to decline.”

That is, unless companies are forced to cut production, which credible analysis has found will happen with Ottawa’s emissions cap – well over one million barrels per day by 2030, which Exner-Pirot and Remillard said would have to come almost entirely from Canada’s exports to the United States.

“If companies are forced to cut their production, they won’t be able to afford to aggressively cut emissions. Nor will they be able to make other investments to maximize and sustain the value of this resource.”

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Ryan Thorpe 

“It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”

Break out the DVD player and aerate a few bottles of the 2015 Riesling, because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has an important work trip.

The food bill for Trudeau’s four-day trip to Italy and Switzerland this June cost more than $71,000, including at least $43,000 spent on airplane food alone, according to the records.

That works out to an average meal cost of $145. Add it up and the total food bill averaged more than $1,700 per member of the Canadian delegation.

To put that in context: the average Canadian family of four spends about $1,400 on food per month, according to Canada’s Food Price Report.

“The per person food bill for Trudeau and his entourage on this trip was more than the average Canadian family spends on groceries in a month,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It would have been cheaper for each member of the prime minister’s delegation to go to the Keg, order a prime rib steak, a Caesar salad, baked garlic shrimp and a bottle of pinot noir for every meal.”

The total taxpayer tab for the four-day trip came to nearly $1 million, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation from the Department of National Defence and the Privy Council Office.

The cost of the trip could be even higher, as “some accommodations were covered by Global Affairs Canada,” according to the records.

Trudeau travelled to Apulia, Italy, and Lucerne, Switzerland, between June 13 and 16, 2024, to attend a G7 Summit and a Summit on Peace in Ukraine.

All told, the trip cost Canadian taxpayers at least $918,000, according to the records.

Prior to take-off, government bureaucrats purchased $812 worth of junk food from a grocery store – including Red Bull, pop (Pepsi, Coke, Sprite), chocolate bars (Kit Kats, Twix’s, Reece’s Pieces) and candy (Swedish Berries, Fuzzy Peaches).

Government bureaucrats also swung by a record store and purchased $102 worth of DVDs for the flight, according to the records.

The purchases included the first season of Wednesday, a supernatural coming-of-age TV show based on the Addams Family, Madame Web, a superhero film, the sci-fi thriller Chronicle, and Witness, a 1995 crime movie starring Harrison Ford.

During the flights, the passengers were served meals that would be at home on the menu of a fine dining restaurant, alongside four types of wine – a 2021 Chardonnay, a 2015 Riesling, a 2018 Baco Noir and a 2021 Merlot.

Meals included veal piccata Milanese with potato, buttered green peas and broccoli, and lamb ribs with whole grain mustard sauce, rice pilaf and sauteed spinach.

Other dinner options included cheese ravioli with rose sauce, roasted red peppers and parmesan cheese, grilled chicken with lemon caper sauce, mashed potatoes and glazed carrots, and beef stroganoff with buttered noodles and snow peas.

For dessert, passengers chose between raspberry cheesecake coulis, chocolate and pistachio cake and Swiss chocolate cake.

“I like Sydney Sweeney as much as the next guy, but maybe Trudeau could do some actual work or download a movie on Netflix the next time he flies, instead of billing taxpayers for a DVD copy of Madame Web,” Terrazzano said. “While he’s at it, maybe Trudeau could forgo the Swiss chocolate cake while Canadians back home are lining up at food banks in record numbers.”

Trudeau travelled with an entourage ranging from 36 to 41 people during the four-day trip, including two coordinators of digital and creative content, a videographer, and a photographer, according to the records.

This is far from the first time a short trip for Trudeau meant a big bill for taxpayers.

Trudeau’s six-day trip to the Indo-Pacific region in September 2023 included more than $223,000 spent on airplane food, according to records obtained by the CTF.

That entire trip came with a taxpayer tab of nearly $2 million.

In 2022, Stewart Wheeler, who was Canada’s chief of protocol at the time, told a Parliamentary committee the government would bring down the cost of international travel.

“We recognize that the system that we had in place was not delivering the kind of oversight and control that Canadian taxpayers deserve,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler’s comments came after Governor General Mary Simon spent $100,000 on inflight catering during a nine-day trip to the Middle East in March 2022.

“The government promised to bring the cost of international travel down, but taxpayers are still getting stuck with outrageous bills,” Terrazzano said. “The government needs to figure out how to fly overseas without spending more on food in a few days than four families spend on groceries in an entire year.”