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TOP STORY
After 10 years of the extremely anti-fossil fuel Trudeau government, the Canadian energy sector is suddenly optimistic that their future need not be one of managed decline.
The government of Prime Minister Mark Carney keeps referring to Canada as an “energy superpower” and is even raising the once-taboo subject of building new pipelines. As former Conservative resources minister Joe Oliver put it in a recent column for the Financial Post, the Liberals have been “mugged by reality.”
But Carney’s inner circle contains more than a few figures who have been quite vocal about their distaste for oil and gas development, sometimes as little as a few months ago. Below, a quick summary of what Carney’s team was saying before all the “energy superpower” talk got started.
Marc-Andre Blanchard
Incoming chief of staff
When Blanchard’s appointment was announced this week, critics quickly seized on a 2023 interview in which he endorsed the end of any new Canadian fossil fuel development. Conservative MP Larry Brock, for one,
that the “new chief of staff is hell-bent on shutting down oil and gas.”
The interview was
published by Net Zero Investor
, and details Blanchard’s efforts to decarbonize the portfolio of the Quebec pension fund CDPQ, where he was head of global sustainability. “CDPQ’s conviction is: It is essential not to contribute to increased oil and coal production and to focus on renewable and transition energies,” Blanchard said at the time, framing the move as one that was ultimately profitable for the fund. “Over five years in equity markets, we made almost $1 billion more than if we had an oil exposure,” he said.
The article also noted that CDPQ had held onto its natural gas holdings, with the reasoning that “although the supply of renewable energy is growing, it is unable to meet all the current demand for energy.”
Mark Carney
Prime minister
It was only a few months that Carney was still chair of Brookfield Asset Management, a firm with massive oil and gas holdings (in addition to its
much-touted green energy portfolio
). In 2021, for instance, a Brookfield subsidiary finalized the acquisition of Inter Pipeline Ltd., Canada’s fourth largest pipeline company.
But, as is well-known, Carney was also one of the world’s most visible proponents of the concept of “net zero,” a view he espoused as the United Nation’s Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance.
Carney’s 2021 book Values gets into detail of his vision for the Canadian energy sector. He wrote that “there will continue to be a place” for Canadian fossil fuels, but within a framework where “the carbon footprint of our energy sources” goes down.
Four years later, this somewhat contradictory view is much the same. In the space of just 30 seconds this week, Carney told a press conference that his government saw an “oil pipeline … to tidewater” as an “opportunity” —
that “decarbonized barrels” of oil should be the priority.
Tim Hodgson
Minister of natural resources
If Blanchard is being accused of being a “keep it in the ground” zealot, Hodgson is the Carney government’s leading counterweight.
A May 23 speech Hodgson delivered to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce spoke of “cutting red tape,” and contained no mention of the terms “net zero” or “decarbonization.” And the only time he mentioned “climate change” was in a section where he suggested Canadian energy should be employed to “displace” dirtier fuels overseas.
“By working with the energy sector to make investments that fight climate change, we can get more barrels to market while cutting carbon emissions,” he said.
Still, Hodgson’s first statements to the House of Commons show him hedging his bets on the central issue of new export pipelines. “We will support new pipelines if there is a national consensus in favour of them,” he
.
Julie Dabrusin
Minister of environment and climate change
Carney’s new environment minister, Dabrusin, has been the MP for Toronto—Danforth since 2015, and replaces Steven Guilbeault, whose tenure was marked by open hostility to the energy sector. As Alberta Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz
upon Guilbeault leaving the post, he had put “an activist agenda ahead of the well being and economic health of Albertans and Canadians.”
Nevertheless, Dabrusin is on record espousing many of Guilbeault’s most controversial positions.
This includes the 2024 boast that “no other country” was placing an emissions cap on its petroleum sector — a statement that was quickly taken up by the Opposition as evidence that Canada was kneecapping its own energy production even as it continued unabated everywhere else.
“No other country has capped emissions from oil and gas production,” Dabrusin told the House of Commons in April, 2024. She’s called carbon pricing the “
largest single tool we have to reduce emissions
,” and in 2022 she said the future of the Canadian oil sector would be to lubricate windmills.
“Even in a net-zero world, we will always need oil for some things, and not just bike chain grease. We also need it to make lubricant for windmills. If members want to keep seeing latex gloves in our hospitals, we will always need oil,”
.
IN OTHER NEWS
If parliamentary procedure is your thing, Monday was witness to an absolutely elite-tier operation by the Conservatives. After the Carney government swore repeatedly that they were too busy to prepare a budget until at least the fall, the House of Commons slipped through an amendment for them to do it anyway.
On a routine House of Commons vote to accept the speech from the throne, the Conservatives threw in an amendment calling on the government “to present to Parliament an economic update or budget this spring, before the House adjourns for the summer.” The NDP and the Bloc Québécois all voted yes on the amendment,
causing it to pass 166 to the Liberals’ 164 votes
.
The Liberals don’t have to table a spring budget, but if they don’t they’ll technically be violating the terms of their own throne speech vote.
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