We also know where these ideas are coming from. Federal MinO staffers, and some provincial, are reading and acting as if they are haunted by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, who ask some good questions, some that apply to our national context.
How do we connect Cdns to renewable power from Coast to Coast to Coast? How do we reduce our dependence on US markets? How do we build lots of affordable housing, and fast? How do we accelerate growth in high-added value sectors that will boost high quality jobs and position Canada in the long-term?
Answering those q's require governments (across jurisdictions) to work better, and together. That will require changes in institutions, as well as new ones.
But change in the form of austerity, tax cuts and massive deregulation don’t help governments work better to build and create the things we need to resolve those crises (it won’t). It’s just a poorly disguised neoliberal agenda.
Once again, Ă la Friedman, corporate lobbyists have successfully seized a crisis to push for the things they want.
In this case, emergency powers to circumvent Indigenous rights and sovereignty as well as environmental regulations, all of this to build infrastructure that belongs to another era and won’t be viable without a LOT of taxpayer support.
That, at the core, is what Bill C-5 proposes, and what those rumours about the cap on oil and gas pollution regs being scrapped tell us.
Perhaps mistakenly, the expectation for Carney– who knows a thing or two about the financial risks of overexposure to fossil fuels– was that he would not fall for the « a pipeline is the response to every single crisis Canada has ever seen » refrain.
That he would not double down on the wild and costly fantasy that uber expensive technologies that have yet to demonstrate any effectiveness at scale will make oil and gas « decarbonized » — while truly carbon-free Canadian energy powered by the sun and wind alr exists and is ready to be harnessed.
And that at a macroeconomy level, he would understand the cost of continuing to entrench the Canadian economy in low-added value resource extraction. And not only because global demand for oil and gas is not growing…
…but also bc while we’re spending our limited political bandwidth and resources on dangerous pipelines to nowhere, we’re not discussing and investing in high-tech, high value, good jobs sectors where we could build a made-in-Canada edge. Where we could attract investments & talent leaving the US.