Energy
Why Eastern Canada Needs to Support Western Provinces and Reject the Government’s Energy Policies
From EnergyNow.ca
By Catherine Swift
There are currently about 400 different laws, regulations, taxes and other measures in Canada that serve as greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction measures. No one has a clue which of them are effective or useless or how much they are damaging our economy and reducing Canadians’ standard of living needlessly.
Dan McTeague
Will this deal actually build a pipeline in Canada?
By Dan McTeague
Will Carney’s new pipeline deal actually help get a pipeline built in Canada? As we said before, the devil is in the details.
While the establishment and mainstream media cheer on the new pipeline agreement, there are specific details you need to be aware of.
Dan McTeague explains in his latest video.
Energy
Canada following Europe’s stumble by ignoring energy reality
Family in Spain eating by candlelight during a blackout, April 2025
From Resource Works
Canada’s own 2024 grid scare proves we’re on the same path unless we change course.
Europe’s green-energy unraveling is no longer a distant cautionary tale. It’s a mirror — and Canada is already seeing the first cracks.
A new Wall Street Journal investigation lays out the European story in stark detail: a continent that slashed emissions faster than anyone else, only to discover that doing so by tearing down firm power before its replacement existed comes with brutal consequences — collapsing industry, sky-high electricity prices, political fragmentation, and a public increasingly unwilling to subsidize wishful thinking.
The tragedy isn’t that Europe tried to decarbonize quickly.
The tragedy is how they did it: by insisting on an “or” transition — renewables or fossil fuels — instead of what every energy-literate nation outside Europe pursued: renewables and fossil fuels, working together while the system evolves.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Canada has already had its first European-style crisis. It happened in January 2024.
Canada’s early warning: the January 2024 electricity crunch
Most people have already forgotten it, because our political class desperately wanted you to. But in January 2024, Western Canada came within a whisker of a full-blown energy security breakdown. Alberta, Saskatchewan, and B.C. were stretched to their limit. The grid was under cascading stress. Contingency plans were activated. Alberta came terrifyingly close to rolling blackouts.
It wasn’t caused by climate change. It wasn’t caused by a mysterious cyberattack.
It was caused by the same structural brittleness now crippling Europe:
- Insufficient firm power, after years of political messaging that we could “electrify everything” without adding real generating capacity.
- Overreliance on intermittent sources not backed by storage or gas.
- A planning system that punted risk into the future, betting the grid could be stretched indefinitely.
The January 2024 event was not a blip. It was a preview.
Our European moment in miniature.
But instead of treating it as the national wake-up call it should have been, B.C. did something telling — and deeply damaging.
The B.C. government’s response: attack the messenger
Just a couple of years ago, an economist publicly warned about the economic price of emerging system vulnerabilities due to a groaning stack of “clean economy” policies.
The B.C. government didn’t respond with data, evidence, or even curiosity. Instead, a cabinet minister used the safety of legislative privilege — that gold-plated shield against accountability — to launch nasty personal attacks on the economist who raised the concerns, which themselves had originated in the government’s own analysis.
No engagement.
No counter-analysis.
No willingness to consider the system risks.
Just slurs — the very definition of anti-intellectual governance.
It was a moment that told the whole story:
Too many policymakers in this province believe that energy systems obey politics, not physics.
Physics always gets the last word.
Europe shows us what political denial turns into
The WSJ reporting couldn’t be clearer about the consequences of that denial:
- Germany: highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world.
- U.K.: highest industrial electricity rates among major economies.
- Industrial flight: chemical plants closing, data centres frozen, major players hinting at exiting Europe entirely.
- Grid instability: wind farms paid tens of millions not to generate because the grid can’t handle it.
- Public revolt: rising support for parties rejecting the entire green-transition agenda.
- Policy whiplash: governments rushing to build gas plants they swore they’d never need.
Europe is now an object lesson in how good intentions, executed poorly, can produce the exact opposite of what was promised: higher prices, higher volatility, declining competitiveness, and a public ready to abandon climate policy altogether.
This is precisely what January 2024 warned us about — but on a continental scale.
The system cost we keep pretending doesn’t exist
Every serious energy expert knows the truth Europe is now living: intermittent renewables require massive amounts of redundant capacity, storage, and backup generation. That’s why the U.K. now needs 120 gigawatts of capacity to serve a demand previously met with 60–70 gigawatts, even though electricity use hasn’t meaningfully grown.
This is the math policymakers prefer not to show the public.
And it’s why B.C.’s refusal to have an honest conversation about firm power is so dangerous.
If we electrify everything without ensuring affordable and abundant natural gas generation, we’re not building a green future.
We’re building Europe, 10 years early.
The lesson for Canada — especially for B.C.
Here is what Europe and January 2024 together say, in one clear voice:
1. There is no energy transition without firm power.
Renewables are part of the system, but they don’t run the system. Natural gas does. Hydro does. Nuclear does. Pretending otherwise is how you end up with rolling blackouts.
2. Political denial makes crises worse.
When ministers attack economists instead of answering them, it signals that ideology is running the show. Europe learned the cost of that. We will too, unless we change course.
3. Affordability is the foundation of public consent.
Europe lost the room. Once people see their bills double while factories close, the climate agenda becomes politically radioactive.
4. B.C. has an advantage Europe would kill for.
Europe dreams of having an abundant, local, low-carbon firm-power fuel like northeastern B.C.’s natural gas. We treat it like a political liability. That’s not strategy. It’s negligence.
5. The transition will fail if we don’t treat electricity like the national security asset it is.
Without energy, there is no industry.
Without industry, there is no prosperity.
Without prosperity, there is no climate policy that survives the next election cycle.
What we need now
Canada must embrace an “and” strategy:
Renewables and natural gas. Electrification and realism. Climate ambition and economic competitiveness.
January 2024 showed us the future in a flash. Europe shows us the end state if we keep ignoring the warning.
We can still choose something better. But only if we stop pretending that energy systems bend to political narratives — and start treating them with the seriousness they demand.
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The federal Liberal government’s approach to energy policy has created problematic regional divisions across Canada. It’s time for the East to reject these crass politics and show greater support for the West.
Two recent court decisions — one at the Supreme Court and another at the Federal Court — have ruled against the federal government with respect to the Impact Assessment Act (the “No More Pipelines Bill”) and the single-use plastics ban. The courts found these laws to be unconstitutional as the federal government had intruded on provincial jurisdiction, among some other considerations such as the absurdity of declaring plastics “toxic.”
Around the same time, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault announced a punitive new emissions cap on the oil and gas industry at COP28, which was also attended by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe. This was seemingly timed to embarrass Guilbeault’s provincial counterparts and the Canadian oil and gas executives in attendance.
Back in October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a three-year exemption for home heating oil from the carbon tax. As heating oil is only used extensively in the Atlantic provinces, this was clearly an attempt to win back sharply declining Liberal support in that region. After Liberals claimed the carbon tax must be applied everywhere — in every industry and every region — this move served as a complete refutation of everything the Liberals had said before. It completely undermined their rationale for the carbon tax.
Meanwhile, countries around the world such as the United Kingdom and much of the European Union have been abandoning or significantly watering down their “net-zero” plans. Auto manufacturers are backing off production of electric vehicles (EVs) as they are not selling and all the lofty goals of the climate-crisis crowd are being questioned, as it has become clear the impact of these policies is hugely damaging to the economy and our standard of living.
For the trillions of dollars spent around the globe to attain the elusive net-zero target, very little has been achieved other than negative impacts on average citizens. Meanwhile, an elite class of “green” activists and government officials travel around the world first-class on the taxpayers’ dime, spewing much carbon in the process.
There are currently about 400 different laws, regulations, taxes and other measures in Canada that serve as greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction measures. No one has a clue which of them are effective or useless or how much they are damaging our economy and reducing Canadians’ standard of living needlessly. This is because the Trudeau government never evaluates the effectiveness of its policies.
The Liberals first sold us the carbon tax as the only measure needed to reduce GHGs, arguing it was a market-based mechanism that would motivate consumers and businesses to make their own sensible decisions to reduce fossil fuel usage. We were also told by former environment minister Catherine McKenna the carbon tax would never exceed $50 a tonne, which we now know was just one of many Liberal bald-faced lies as the tax is slated to increase to at least $170/tonne by 2030.
Despite dishonest claims the carbon tax was the only measure needed, we have subsequently seen the so-called Clean Fuel Standard, the absurdly red-tape intensive Impact Assessment Act (which the Supreme Court has now overthrown), and Guilbeault’s recent emissions cap.
Interestingly, other parts of the economy emit similar amounts of GHGs as the oil and gas sector, but those industries are not subject to an emissions cap. Could it be because those industries are located in regions that tend to vote Liberal, unlike Alberta and Saskatchewan? Perish the thought!
Throughout all of the climate policy overkill, the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan have remained steadfast in opposing foolish federal government initiatives based on facts, science and constitutional law. All Canadians should know that Alberta in particular is a disproportionately significant contributor to the rest of Canada in many ways — equalization payments, contributions to programs such as CPP and Employment Insurance as well as personal and corporate taxation and royalty revenue from the oil and gas industry.
It was truly ironic that, in the context of the federal budget earlier this year, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland boasted that government revenues had come in higher than forecast. Yet the key source for this excess revenue was the oil and gas sector the Liberals are working hard to kill.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have been doing yeoman’s work defending the jurisdictional rights of all provinces and opposing the costly and unproductive federal government policies. At the same time, their success is boosting the economy of the whole country.
While Trudeau plays his destructive and divisive regional games — putting in place policies that benefit some parts of Canada while punishing others — all in the name of Liberal votes, the whole of Canada should call his bluff and support the leadership role that is being taken by the Prairie provinces.
The next federal election would be an ideal time to demonstrate that support.
Catherine Swift is president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada