Mike Rose is Chair, President and CEO of Tourmaline Oil Corp.

From EnergyNow.ca

By Mike Rose of Tourmaline Oil Corp.

There has never been a more urgent time to aggressively develop Canada’s massive resource wealth

There has never been a more urgent time to aggressively develop Canada’s massive resource wealth. An increasingly competitive world is organizing into new alliances that are threatening our traditional Western democracies.

Weaker or underperforming countries may be left behind economically and, in some cases, their sovereignty may be compromised. We cannot let either scenario happen to Canada.

Looking inward, our country has posted among the weakest economic growth of all G20 nations over the past decade — we are at real risk of delivering a materially diminished standard of living to our children and subsequent future generations.

Canada is blessed with one of the largest and most diverse natural resource endowments in the world. It’s not just oil and gas; it’s uranium, precious metals, rare earth elements, enormous renewable forests, a vast fertile agricultural land base and, of course, the single-largest freshwater reserve on the planet.

This is nothing new; Canada has been regarded as a resource-extraction economy for a long time, but over the past two decades we’ve been slowing down and finding reasons to not advance new projects. While looking ahead to an exciting new future economy is enticing, the majority of our easily accessible resource wealth remains largely untapped. Our Canadian resource sectors are the most capital-efficient, technologically advanced and environmentally responsible in the world. We’ve got the winning combination.

Canada has among the largest, lowest-cost natural gas reserves in the world — we’re already the fourth-largest producer. With consistent regulatory support, we can rapidly evolve into a leader in the growing global LNG business.

This country produces among the lowest-emission natural gas in the world and technology adaptation is widening the gap. A 10 bcf/day Canadian LNG industry targeted to displace coal-fired electrical generation in Asia would offset the vast majority of emissions from the entire domestic oil and gas industry. Contemplating a cap on the Canadian natural gas industry is actually damaging to the global environment, as growing demand will be met by jurisdictions with higher associated emissions.

As developed economies look at electrification to accelerate emissions reduction, nuclear power is becoming increasingly attractive. Canada is already one of the largest uranium producers in the world and has long possessed one of the most efficient and safest reactor designs. This is an advantage we created for ourselves several decades ago; it’s time to harvest this opportunity.

The rare earth elements required for a growing solar industry and battery requirements associated with electrification are abundant in certain regions in Canada — for example, a large new mining opportunity is emerging in Ontario. We should make that happen. One of the great outcomes of accelerating our multi-sector resource opportunity is that the economic benefits will be enjoyed across the country; all Canadians will share in it.

The Canadian agricultural industry has been long regarded as a world leader in efficiency, yield and technical innovation. Global food security and affordability are rapidly emerging issues, and Canada has a role to play here, as well. Not only could we make it more attractive for Canadian producers to grow output and explore novel new transportation corridors to feed more of the world, we have a large, well-established, globally competitive fertilizer industry.

There are many more future resource wealth opportunities we could be capitalizing on. The list is as long as the imagination of our well-educated and entrepreneurial resource sector workforce.

Enormous amounts of capital are required for these projects, and that global capital is most certainly available. These pools of capital will flow into Canada if we demonstrate a willingness to consistently support the Canadian resource sector at provincial and federal government levels.

Accelerating domestic multi-sector resource development provides solutions to many of the problems currently facing Canada. We’ll be playing to strengths that we have established and evolved over many decades. We are the most efficient and technologically advanced in the full spectrum of resource development. Adoption and innovative adaptation of the continuous march of technology advancements will only make us better.

To paraphrase: We can take advantage of what’s between our ears to do an even better job of developing what’s beneath our feet.

Mike Rose is Chair, President and CEO of Tourmaline Oil Corp.

In an ongoing monthly series presented by the Calgary Herald and Financial Post, Canadian business leaders share their thoughts on the country’s economic challenges and opportunities.

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

If female athletes came together and demanded, with one voice, that female sports be protected, they would be pushing at an open door.

What happens when obvious truths about the differences between the sexes are denied by the elites at the behest of the transgender movement? And what happens when female athletes discover that their rights mean less than the newly invented “rights” of trans-identifying men to invade their spaces?  

We’ve seen the answer to that play out over the past few years. This month alone, a trans-identifying male beat his female competitors at an Oregon track meet by a full six seconds, with the video of him zipping across the finish line sparking outrage; a trans-identifying marathon runner announced that he will be competing in the full set of six marathon majors in Boston in the male, female and “non-binary” categories; and courts in West Virginia and Ohio ruled that trans-identifying males can compete on female sports teams. 

In the meantime, U.K. culture secretary Lucy Frazer called for a ban on males in female sports after meeting with representatives of a number of female sports leagues, writing: 

In competitive sport, biology matters. And where male strength, size and body shape gives athletes an indisputable edge, this should not be ignored. By protecting the female category, they can keep women’s competitive sport safe and fair and keep the dream alive for the young girls who dream of one day being elite sportswomen.

She concluded, “We must get back to giving women a level playing field to compete. We need to give women a sporting chance.” Refreshingly, she called on sporting bodies to take an “unambiguous position” on the matter. 

That, of course, is common sense. What makes Frazer’s statements significant is that she does not, like most politicians trying to thread the needle by accepting transgender ideology but rejecting the inevitable conclusions thereof, make multiple references to “transgender women.” She instead refers to keeping male bodies out of female sports, much to the outrage of trans activists, who insist that males who identify as females are females, and thus have female bodies, because they said so.  

Over the past several years, it has fallen largely to the few female sportswomen who dared to risk the opprobrium of the LGBT movement to speak for the majority and point out the unfairness of allowing males to invade their sporting domains; now, an increasing number are willing to speak out. A recent study conducted by Manchester Metropolitan and Swansea universities, published April 17 in the Journal of Sports Sciences, indicates that the majority of female athletes want women’s sports to be categorized by sex rather than “gender identity.” 

Fifty-eight percent of respondents in the study of elite female athletes wanted categorization by biological sex; that rose to 77 percent among those classified as “world-class athletes” who had competed in Olympic or world championship finals. Researchers surveyed 175 “national, elite and world class female athletes – current and retired – from a range of sports and countries” and included “26 world champions, 22 Olympians and six Paralympians,” making it the largest study of its kind conducted thus far. A BBC Sports study last month found that over 100 elite U.K. female athletes “would be uncomfortable” with trans-identifying males competing in the female categories of their sports. 

According to the study, there is one exception to the rule: the “majority of athletes competing in non-Olympic sports believe changing category should be allowed, with the highest rate of 74% among those in ‘precision’ sports such as archery.”  

In short, the higher female athletes climb, the more likely they are to object to trans-identifying males competing in their categories. Most of these athletes, of course, remain unnamed. Imagine if they came out together and demanded, with one voice, that female sports be protected. It would constitute a cultural sea change – and I suspect the moment is right for them to do so. If they pushed, they would be pushing at an open door. 

Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.