Connect with us
[the_ad id="89560"]

Dan McTeague

COP in Focus – Part 5 – Trudeau Commits to Shutting Down Canada, While Driving a Jaguar

Published

6 minute read

#Just out of his electric Jaguar (because nothing says “I’m staying in touch with the average person” like a Jaguar), Justin Trudeau took the stage at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting in Glasgow yesterday.

Trudeau’s message in Glasgow:  his extreme green agenda is about to get, well, more extreme.

Here are the “highlights”:

– a carbon tax set to reach 170 dollars a ton in less than a decade. (Over four times its current price);

– a second carbon tax called the “Clean Fuel Standard”, or CFS, that he sneaked by with little notice as a regulation;

– a tax on methane that is, in effect, a third carbon tax for anyone using natural gas (and this represents more than a third of our energy in Canada);

– billions in handouts to cities to buy electric buses that then don’t work well in the Canadian winter (and in some cases need polluting diesel generators to be heated);

– billions to the provinces for electric vehicle charging station subsidies so that people wealthy enough to buy an electric car can find a place to charge it;

– billions in handouts to an international fund to help other countries reduce their emissions with the same;

And that’s not all, even at a time when the country is massively in debt and more so every day, when the cost of living is rising dramatically and banks are now signaling interest rate rises are coming, when Canadians are trying to come out of over a year and a half of unprecedented lockdowns and start society up again……..

Now the Prime Minister says Canada will put an absolute cap on oil and gas emissions, and lower that cap every year.

All these announcements might seem like mere noise to most of us. This is because we don’t appreciate the day-to-day implications – who has the time to figure out what all of this means? And it sounds good, doesn’t it? You know, because “green.” Because it’s 2015, um, no – because it’s 2021.

But Canadians need to know these latest installments of Trudeau’s green agenda have very real implications. And yesterday’s announcement should drive the point home.

If you don’t allow greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to rise, how do you build infrastructure projects? How do you grow your economy? How do you deliver oil and gas exports to nations that want them and can’t believe we won’t export them? How do you get our oil and gas – some of the most cleanly produced in the world – to places where people still heat with much dirtier, much less efficient, much less healthy wood and dung? The fact is you don’t.

Trudeau’s announcement is his most powerful signal yet that he will kill the Canadian economy to satisfy his ideological green agenda. Our lives are about to become significantly more expensive.

And this doesn’t have to happen.

But Trudeau is making it happen.

Will resource company CEOs finally stand-up?

Will all those executives bending over backwards to show how committed they are to being “green” finally defend the interests of their shareholders – all of us who have their stocks in our RSPs and pension funds – and say “enough is enough”? Will our energy executives start to express even the slightest interest in the hundreds of thousands of Canadians currently in their employ – people who will lose their jobs as a result of Trudeau’s policies?

Life is going to get even less affordable. But wow, that electric Jaguar is a nice-looking car isn’t it?

Dan McTeague | President, Canadians for Affordable Energy

dan_mcteague_headshot.jpg

An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions.

Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.

 

An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions. Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.

Follow Author

Dan McTeague

We are on a Net Zero collision course

Published on

Dan McTeague

Written By Dan McTeague

Welcome to 2024 where the threat of looming power outages in a resource-rich, developed country is a reality. And we have Justin Trudeau and his ideologically-driven caucus to thank for it.

In the past month alone, Alberta has issued four emergency alerts warning consumers to reduce demand or the grid could face the risk of rotating power outages. Residents were urged in one alert to immediately limit their electrical use to essential needs only.

According to the Alberta Energy System Operator (AESO,) which manages the grid, the alert was due to sustained cold temperatures. Alberta’s grid is more vulnerable in the winter due to the decreased opportunity to generate solar power with the shorter days and of course because during extreme cold, there is usually less opportunity for wind power generation.

Thank goodness for hydrocarbons since over those days more than 80% of Alberta’s power came from natural gas and to a lesser extent, coal.

This situation in Alberta should serve as a warning for the rest of the country.

That’s because the Trudeau government is aggressively moving forward with their Clean Electricity Regulations which mandate that by 2035 the Canadian grid be zero emissions. This means the entire country will increasingly be reliant on unreliable energy sources.

And last month, the Trudeau Liberals implemented their Electric Vehicle Availability Standard, which mandates all new light-duty cars and trucks must be zero emission by 2035 as well. In other words, after 2035 forget about purchasing a new gas-powered car or diesel-driven truck. Welcome to Trudeau’s Net Zero world!

Many Canadians are wondering how we are going to produce the energy to power our cars along with everything else in our lives, especially in the depths of the cold winter months.

And the answer is simply, “we can’t.”

We are on a collision course of the Liberal government’s making. In their ideological zeal to achieve Net Zero, they seem to have been completely unhinged from reality.

As I like to remind people, Canada contributes 1.5% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  Even if we halted all use of fossil fuels in our country it would have no global effect on world CO2 levels.

We can see the consequences of this pursuit of Net Zero, in Europe. Germany has frantically put coal power back on the grid in order to meet electricity demand. The UK is slamming the breaks on EVs and stepping up North Sea oil exploration. Italy is spending billions trying to fill its energy gaps with natural gas from Libya.

We are staring down the barrel of an upcoming election and if we want to ensure our quality of life, we need a major course correction. This does not mean delaying the implementation of EV regulations, or emissions caps, or even simply pushing back Net Zero target dates.

No. We need a party that will stand up against Net Zero and its related policies. We need a government that will see that this is a suicide mission we need to abandon entirely, not simply punt down the road.

Let’s hope we don’t have to wait for the worst-case scenario before Canadians finally realize the standard of living and access to affordable energy cannot be taken for granted. We truly are on a collision course with reality, due to ideological government policies that will have a crippling effect on our economy and way of life.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy

Continue Reading

Dan McTeague

COP28 – The grand delusion continues

Published on

From Canadians for Affordable Energy

Dan McTeague  Written By Dan McTeague

The 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) wrapped up this week in Dubai. That the two-week conference, whose object is to discuss the global phase-out of fossil fuels, is being held in one of the world’s top ten oil producers — the UAE — is only the first of COP’s absurdities.

The next is the sheer number of participants — more than 97,000 of them — flying to the desert, in most cases on the taxpayers’ dime, to talk about reducing carbon emissions in the hopes of cooling the planet.

The hyperbole from people such as Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, who said those at COP28 “are steering the course of our shared future but the science tells us we are in grave danger of bequeathing our children a completely unlivable world” is almost too much to bear.

And what did they actually accomplish? As has been the case for the past 27 conferences, very little. While there is a lot of grandstanding and speeches and promises from the 157 countries in attendance to phase out fossil fuels, no commitments were actually made.

Surely this comes as no surprise since all of the nations present run on fossil fuel users and have no real intention of abolishing them, especially not countries such as Saudi Arabia, China and India. There is no scenario where they would “phase out” the life blood of their economies for the sake of the quixotic goal of achieving Net Zero emissions so as to — maybe — reduce global temperatures by 1.5 degrees.

And as if to make the farce even more laughable, it has been announced that Azerbaijan will be the host for COP29. Oil, gas and related petroleum products account for 91% of Azerbaijan’s total exports. Is it at all likely that they will be getting rid of them anytime soon? Definitely not.

As was recently noted by Benny Peiser of Net Zero Watch, COP28 is happening while the Green Agenda is in deep crisis and is falling apart around the world.

  • There is a massive backlash against the cost of Net Zero policies. Renewable energy projects have been scrapped including major wind projects in the US and the UK.
  • Electric vehicle sales have slumped.
  • Germany is facing an energy crisis, frantically bringing coal fired plants back into service to replace the energy lost when they shuttered their nuclear plants for nebulous environmental reasons.
  • The Dutch Farmers party has made major gains in two successive elections after their environmentalist government in their obsession to achieve net zero tried to restrict them out of existence.
  • Argentina has elected a new president who has called climate change a “socialist lie.” Even French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for the EU to pump the breaks on net zero regulations.

Why? Because net zero policies are unpopular and damaging. It is all well and good to talk about targets and goals and objectives, but when rubber hits the road and daily lives are affected, that’s another story. People have come to see that pursuing these absurd policies comes at an enormous societal and economic cost.

If a country wants affordable, reliable power to keep the lights on and heat their homes, they need the baseload power that oil and natural gas provide.

Yet here in Canada the Trudeau government is doubling, no, tripling down on their punishing Net Zero Agenda.

Our environmental minister Steven Guilbeault even used COP28 as his stage to make two major regulatory announcements that will have a devastating effect on the Canadian economy.

Last week, he announced his methane emissions reduction plan and an emissions cap, without even consulting the leader of the province it would affect the most. Give me a break. The grandstanding, the virtue signaling — it would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging.

Canadians can’t afford groceries or pay their rent or buy homes. We are suffering an affordability crisis. The relentless taxation on our lives from a carbon tax to a second carbon tax (the Clean Fuel Standard), to Minister Guilbeault’s newest schemes, are all part of the Net Zero policies that are destroying our economy.

Remember this is all fuelled by the preposterous notion we can somehow affect the climate if we reduce our greenhouse gases from 1.4% of global emissions to 0.4%.

In light of all of that, the Trudeau government is more interested in how they are perceived on the world stage than how their policies affect the Canadians they are supposed to represent.

Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, to their credit, attended the conference with their own Alberta and Saskatchewan delegations to advocate for the industry that employs thousands of Canadians and is a major driver of the Canadian economy.

And, it should be taken as a compliment that Alberta was even given the “Fossil of the Day” award by activists at the summit for its temporary ban on large scale renewable projects.

At least Canada had a few representatives there with its best interest in mind, and that weren’t taken in by the grand delusion.

Continue Reading

Trending

X