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Green Technology Is “Pie In The Sky” According To Premier Kenny

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The economic benefits of oil and gas in Alberta are well known. The volatility of the boom and bust cycle is also a familiar song and dance in this province. When you take into consideration the environmental impact of the resource, the fossil fuel industry is a double-edged sword. It’s also commonly understood that moving to a renewable future, with less environmental impact, is better for everyone in the long run. 

To me, the solution is pretty straight forward: the sooner we move to a renewable long-term energy mix, the better off we will be. 

The path forward that I’ve heard from the Alberta business community is that we need a strong fossil fuel industry to support a renewable industry – that we can have oil and gas companies working side by side with renewable energy companies, growing the Canadian energy industry together. Profits from a strong economy can be used to finance our diversification. 

During the April 24th press conference, Jason Kenny threw that narrative out the window. He wants Alberta to be a petrol state, full stop. 

When Tom Ross from 660 news asked the Premier about working with the US on the Green New Deal, he got quite upset. He made it absolutely clear that he is only interested in fossil fuel jobs. 

“Our focus is on getting people back to work in Alberta, not pie in the sky ideological schemes.” 

For the UCP, the only good job is an oil job. 

The Premier went on to say “That kind of question in the middle of an economic crisis from a Calgary based media outlet, frankly, throws me for a loop”.

What message does that send to the thousands of Albertans who are working in renewable energy? 

What about Iron and Earth, the non-profit that is training oil field workers with additional skills so they can work in both fields? What about the students at SAIT, NAIT, the University of Calgary, and the University of Alberta who are in alternative energy courses? 

What about the people who are currently working in renewable energy at companies like BluEarth, Eavor, and SkyFire? Do their jobs not count? Are the projects that they operate and profit from “pie in the sky”?

What about the former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his new role at Terrestrial Energy? Does the work he’s doing to develop nuclear power in Canada qualify as “pie in the sky”?

The main goal of the Green New Deal is “meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources” 

That’s a completely reasonable goal in my opinion. There is no reason why Canada and Alberta shouldn’t work with the US to help them develop their plan. Unless your goal is to create oil jobs instead of jobs. 

There are shovel-ready projects that will put Albertans to work in areas other than oil and gas. Not to mention the potential in this province in areas like software, technology, manufacturing, and engineering services. There are viable solutions being left cold because the UCP is so focused on fossil fuels, they can’t see anything else.

Teck Resources exits energy industry group CAPP, citing cost-cutting

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There are smart ways to diversify our exports

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From the Fraser Institute

By Philip Cross

The Bank of Canada recently cut interest rates again, with further cuts likely in response to Donald Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Canadian exports. This continues the Bank’s reflexive turn to lower interest rates to goose growth every time the economy slows that began during the 2008 global financial crisis and reached its apex during the outbreak of the Covid pandemic when rates essentially hit their zero lower bound.

It’s time policymakers in Ottawa stop relying on easy money policies in response to every hiccup in economic growth. Lower interest rates have introduced major distortions into Canada’s economy. They have fueled excessive debt levels in all sectors of the economy, helped to create a housing bubble that will depress growth when it bursts, undermined our consensus on the usefulness of immigration when excessive demand raised the cost of shelter, and led youths to lose hope of achieving the dream of owning a home. Housing’s unsustainably large share of our economy helps undermine our potential productivity, the lack of which Bank of Canada Deputy Governor Carolyn Rogers last year called a “break the glass” emergency. However, the Bank’s own easy money policies spurs the shift of more resources to housing and encourage governments to ignore taking actions that would boost business investment and exports, the two sectors needed to improve our long-term productivity and competitiveness.

There are policy alternatives to just mechanically lowering interest rates and juicing housing demand. The silver lining in Trump’s tariff threats is they drive home to Canadians the twin follies of not diversifying our energy exports from the U.S. market and not lowering internal barriers to trade among our provinces. We witlessly ignored opportunities to move on both fronts for nearly a decade after Trump fired his opening salvo in the trade war with punitive tariffs on our aluminum and steel industries in 2017.

Energy, our leading export, depends on the U.S. market for 93 per cent of its export earnings. Canada has wasted numerous opportunities over the past decade to open overseas markets for oil and gas. The Trudeau government cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline that would have sent Alberta crude to Asia. The proposed Energy East pipeline to send oil to New Brunswick and ultimately Europe floundered after the federal government complicated the approval process. Multiple proposals for LNG projects were rejected, although the Quebec government is reconsidering its opposition to ship natural gas from an LNG terminal in Saguenay to Europe. Quebec is not reflexively against pipelines: its former Premier Jean Charest boasts how his government oversaw one connecting crude oil imports landing at Levis to refineries in Montreal by clearly outlining the benefits to Quebecers. Restricting our oil and gas exports to the U.S. has depressed their prices, costing Canada tens of billions of dollars of lost revenue and betraying our European allies when they desperately needed alternatives to Russian natural gas supplies following its attack on Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the federal government displayed little leadership in trying to get the provinces to reduce the thicket of regulations and restrictions that impair trade within Canada. The 2017 Canada Free Trade Agreement provided a road map to potentially lower internal trade barriers, but most provinces have been reluctant to tread that path. It is the height of hypocrisy for Canadians to complain about Trump’s threatened tariffs when we tolerate internal trade barriers that are every bit as important and costly to our economy. Statistics Canada, for example, found that trade within Canada moves as if there were a 7 per cent tariff on goods moving between provinces, while trade within the U.S. flows as if there was no effective tariff.

The shock and outrage Canadians are expressing about Trump’s pending 25 per cent tariff on most exports can be channeled to our benefit. Achieving that will require governments to stop our dangerous over-reliance on low interest rates to stimulate housing. Instead, the focus should be improving our access to markets outside the U.S., which are clearly viable and profitable for goods such as oil and gas. Furthermore, if we truly believe our own rhetoric about the benefits of trade, we need to take concrete steps to liberalize trade within Canada.

Philip Cross 2014.jpg

Philip Cross

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
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Global Affairs goes on March Madness spending spree, buys $9,900 Lego set

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From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Ryan Thorpe

Global Affairs Canada bought $527,000 worth of artwork during year-end spending sprees in 2023 and 2024 – a practice commonly referred to as “March Madness.”

Bureaucrats even spent $9,900 on “Lego blocks,” according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“If you want proof that government bureaucrats have way too many tax dollars on their hands, look no further than Global Affairs Canada’s half-a-million dollar March Madness art spending spree,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “It’s supremely disrespectful to taxpayers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on art they’ll never see in far-flung embassies.”

The government of Canada’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31.

On March 31, 2023, GAC bureaucrats purchased 32 pieces of artwork for $160,000, according to the records.

Included in the purchases were a $25,000 “archival pigment print photograph,” a $20,000 piece of “fabric art” made of “poly-cotton, canvas, steel hanging rod” and a $3,500 piece featuring “cowhide, dyed fox fur, Swarovski crystals, caribou hair and 24K gold.”

Bureaucrats also expensed a $6,000 oil painting on canvas and a $8,500 piece of “fabric art” made of “home-tanned moose hide, cross fox fur, canvas, trim, seed beads, 24K gold beads [and] nylon thread.”

The following year, on Feb. 9, 2024, GAC bureaucrats bought 71 pieces of artwork on the same day, billing taxpayers for $291,000.

Purchases included 31 paintings costing a combined $153,000.

One bureaucrat ordered a $9,900 set of “Lego blocks,” described in government records as “mixed media.”

Then, on March 26, 2024, GAC bureaucrats expensed 12 more pieces of artwork to taxpayers, costing more than $50,000.

Included in the purchases was a $9,000 piece of “fabric art” described as “wool, cotton, embroidery floss,” and a $7,500 piece of “mixed media” described as “handmade khadi paper woven on block printed industrially.”

All told, GAC’s year-end spending spree on art the past two years cost taxpayers $527,000. For the sake of comparison, that’s enough money to cover an entire year’s grocery bills for 31 Canadian families of four.

“March Madness is a long-observed phenomenon in Ottawa which sees federal departments quickly spend all of their remaining annual budgets in the last month of the fiscal year,” according to a report from CBC.

“Every March, taxpayers are forced to watch a bad episode of bureaucrats gone wild,” Terrazzano said. “Taxpayers need the government to fully open up the books, go line by line through each department’s spending and take a chainsaw to all this waste.”

This isn’t the first time spending by GAC bureaucrats has triggered alarms bells.

GAC bureaucrats spent more than $3.3 million on alcohol between January 2019 and May 2024, according to separate access-to-information records obtained by the CTF. That means the department is spending an average of $51,000 a month on beer, wine and spirits.

The CTF has long criticized GAC spending, including a $8,800 sex toy show in Germany, $1,700 for a “Lesbian Pirates!” musical, $12,500 for senior citizens in other countries to talk about their sex lives and a $51,000 red-carpet photo exhibit for rockstar Bryan Adams.

“From sex toy shows to lesbian pirate musicals to a $9,900 Lego set, Global Affairs Canada may be the worst waste offender in the entire federal government,” Terrazzano said. “And that’s saying a lot.”

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