Don’t risk Canada’s future by following Trump and his Big Oil enablers

It is no secret that the Trump administration is fully owned by the oil and gas industry. So it should be no surprise to Canadians that recently, some of the wealthiest oil and gas companies operating in Canada urged political parties to jump on the same anti-environment bandwagon. 

Canadians have fought for two decades to address climate change and make sure industry pays for the mess that it makes in our air, water and land. We’re seeing the results. For the first time ever, Canada’s emissions are going down, clean investments and renewable energy jobs are projected to soon exceed those in fossil fuels, and we have systems in place to make industry pay for the pollution they create.

Yet, the oil and gas CEOs are pushing our governments to sacrifice all of that. Luckily, not all decision-makers are falling for it. Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources clapped back against the oil and gas companies in his own letter   :

A clip from Minister Wilkinson’s letter in response to oil and gas CEOs.

We know the oil and gas industry never lets a crisis go to waste, seizing every opportunity to push the same tired rhetoric we always hear from oil and gas companies and their political mouthpieces: expand fossil fuels and pipelines, scrap any rules limiting pollution, eliminate any form of environmental assessments and provide more taxpayer handouts. For example, these same companies used the devastating COVID pandemic to push the same set of demands in a secret memo to the federal Cabinet. 

Now, they’re emboldened by the success they are having in gutting environmental protections in the United States and want to do the same here in Canada.

Of course, none of these things would help with the current situation. That shouldn’t surprise us. Oil and gas companies don’t have the best interests of Canadians – or other parts of the Canadian economy – at heart. 

Why would they? According to recent data, more than 70 per cent of oil sands production in Canada is owned by foreign – mostly American – shareholders. 

Take the renewed push for pipelines. It ignores the fact that no company wants to pay for building a new oil or gas pipeline. With global demand for oil set to peak in the next four years and then significantly decline, no company is willing to bet its own money on what is guaranteed to quickly become a massive stranded asset. That means they want us to pay for it instead and taxpayers should be very concerned. The latest $20 billion loan to the Trans Mountain Expansion project, now totalling way over $30 billion, should serve as a warning: it’s taxpayers who end up paying the price for new fossil fuel infrastructure as foreign-owned companies and wealthy shareholders reap the rewards.

The letter also shows that industry CEOs have pivoted away from their former support of  industrial carbon pricing rules. These rules ensure big polluters pay for their pollution. And the rules work – they have effectively driven down pollution levels more than any other measure. This is one of the best tools that Canada has for cutting climate pollution and creating a competitive, clean economy – and the industry now wants to scrap it. 

This is Canada’s time to forge our own future based on our own values. We can grow our independence, bring Canadian innovation to the world, and expand our trading partners by investing in new infrastructure and industries, including low-carbon steel and aluminium (which we are uniquely positioned to produce), clean electricity, food, aerospace products, public transit, and more. We have the skills, people, and resources to lead the clean energy revolution.

Canada could become a renewable energy powerhouse. By scaling up renewable energy projects and building our national electricity grid, we could put thousands of Canadians to work, lower energy costs and achieve energy security. 

We can’t allow oil and gas companies to put Canada’s hard-fought, years-long climate progress at risk to benefit their wealthy CEOs and American shareholders while at the same time failing to acknowledge that the world’s energy future will be clean.