“We are touchingly prone to mistaking our models of reality for reality itself, mistaking the strength of our certainty for the strength of the evidence, thus moving through a dream of our own making that we call life…we are simply not capable of processing the full scope of reality. Our minds cope by choosing fragments of it to the exclusion, and often to the erasure, of the rest.” – Maria Popova/The Marginalian
Great words, hey? All part of the human condition. All of us suck, in this regard, at some time or other. Best practice, as a human, is to just become cognizant of this trap we all fall into.
It is even easier to fall into the trap when surrounded by like-minded or sycophantic people, one’s that don’t challenge much. In other words, politics.
Ok I’ll be nice. That quote is an olive branch to the ruling cabal; that it is very difficult to absorb many facets of reality for anyone, and far harder when boxed in by an ideological perspective, baked in on campaign trails, that makes it ten times harder to ‘process the full scope of reality’ if that means walking back cherished positions.
Well, hard as it might be, the time has come. Poke your head up from doomscrolling or cat videos or TikTok and look around. The world is screaming for steady, reliable, natural resources.
The full scope of reality is pounding at Canada’s door, saying, Excuse me, we really, really need Canadian oil and gas and metals and minerals. Even the CBC is running with the idea, including a story, boldly entitled where no editor has gone before, “Nervous nations calling Canada’s energy minister after Iran strikes”. The article quotes energy minister Tim Hodgson as saying, “So we’ve already seen an uptick in inquiries about how quickly Canada can expand its clean and conventional energy exports.”
The recovery program begins with some deprogramming. I seriously doubt many countries are now asking Canada how quickly it can scale up ‘clean energy’, and so what he is really trying to say but it is oh-so-hard is that countries are desperate for Canadian oil and gas (the tagged on reference to ‘conventional energy exports’).
Many countries are looking for oil and natural gas, without qualifiers. Actually, they have been for a while. Several years ago, multiple nations including Germany and Japan came to Canada looking for our natural gas, and we told them to pound sand. Have some green hydrogen instead, our leader lectured, despite the inconvenient problem of developing an imaginary industry from scratch that is just incomprehensibly uneconomic from any vantage point. The countries went away.
Here is why they went away; this was the attitude of our federal government two short years ago. A quote from 2024 has been making the rounds on social media lately, whereby Liberal cabinet minister, no it’s worse, Liberal minister in charge of natural resources, lectures the media: “…oil and gas will peak this decade, in fact oil is probably peaking this year, and the economic plan of the Conservative of Canada is simply to produce more oil and gas into a market that inevitably, if we are going to fight climate change, will begin to decline. That is ridiculous…it will leave Canada uncompetitive and poorer..i would encourage Mr Poilievre and the folks that sit on the conservative benches to at least try to tell the truth.”
It is refreshing to hear current Minister Hodgson speak differently; a critical starting point. We are not out of the woods by any stretch with respect to fully leveraging our natural resource assets, but we also need to remember how immensely difficult it is for anyone to walk back a firmly or nearly religiously held belief. Hodgson wasn’t part of the Trudeau government, but the current apparatus definitely contains much frightening continuity.
Sadly, it takes big negative shocks to the system to shatter complacency. There is no other way. Canadian energy commentators have for a decade been pounding the table about how valuable Canada’s natural resources are to the world, how we take them for granted, how we underestimate the value to the Canadian economy by pushing for the industry’s demise. We glossed over the importance of messaging, and symbolism; how devastating it was to investors to hear our very own government flex its muscles to thwart development of all sorts of Canadian resources.
Canada has a black eye to this day. The Bank of Canada, a thoroughly staid institution (which they should be), calls a lack of foreign investment in Canada a ‘break-the-glass’ emergency situation. We can all see the problem. Everyone, everywhere.
It is great to see attempts to woo foreign investment as we are seeing now, but a pile of MOUs is less valuable than a pile of Kleenex. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problem is not resolved by drunken-buddy level enthusiasm that evaporates the next morning when reality surfaces again.
Canada has to deal with some of the regulatory calcification we’ve let build up for some time, before we will be an attractive investment destination. We are still paralyzed by endless programs and reporting requirements and regulations that make potential investors go “Ewww…is there anywhere else?”
Here are some real life examples, among many. We have a federal plastics registry reporting requirement, with real teeth, that requires virtually any business enterprise bigger than a mom and pop shop to document all plastic flowing through the business – where it came from, how many kg per year, what kind of plastic each piece is (Phase 1 – PHASE 1! – lists 21 different types of plastic), and where it went. The Guide for Reporting for Phase 1 is 60 pages long. You must comply, or else.
There is the Forced Labour in Canadian Supply Chains legislation, which is very similar; companies need to report on whether or not there is child or forced labour in any of their supplies, no matter where they originate and no matter how impossible it is to determine. It’s not just a computer you purchase; the reporting structure wants to know the possibility of child or forced labour that went into each of the components. How the hell would anyone know that? Doesn’t matter. You must comply, or else.
If we are serious about attracting investment, we need to get rid of a vast number of “You must comply, or else” programs that will accomplish little, at great cost. The federal web page announcing the plastics registry gleefully states that the program will create 42,000 jobs. More bureaucratic bloat, higher costs of business, higher taxes to pay those salaries…why?
It is a noble cause to reduce plastic going to landfills, as it is to stand against child and forced labour. But are these the ways to do it? Has no one in government heard of the 80/20 rule, whereby 80 percent of a typical problem can be resolved by focusing on the easiest/simplest 20 percent? These government approaches are completely devoid of any sense, because they are ideologically driven. The goal of the plastics registry, plainly stated on the federal website, is to have “zero plastic waste.” Is that realistic? Sensible? At what cost to investment?
Perhaps these two programs alone do not deter investors, but they are far from the only two. There are monsters like the industrial carbon tax, which still remains – only the consumer end was removed, because consumers vote. In other words, removing the consumer carbon tax was for purposes of electability, and nothing else.
Consider the effect of the current industrial carbon tax as of Apr 1, 2026. The carbon tax rises to $110/tonne which works out to about $5.75 per gigajoule. Over the past 12 months, Or Feb 25-Jan26,Alberta’s reference gas price, AECO, averaged CAD $1.63/GJ. In the US, the Henry Hub price for same period converted to CAD/GJ worked out to about $5.05. Hey, look at that! What a competitive advantage! Western Canadian gas has a $3.42/GJ cost advantage – which is massive for energy intensive industries.
Oh, but look out. Canada’s carbon tax added $4.99/GJ to the cost in 2025, and including that, Alberta’s dirt cheap gas now cost users $6.62/GJ whereas any customer that could access HH gas in the US paid the equivalent of $5.05. Purchasers up here paid 30 percent more for fuel than in the US. Let that sink in: here in Canada we are bloated with natural gas to the extent that the price is the same as it was last century, and yet anyone that wants to purchase that cheap gas to fuel a business will find the consumption bill is 30 percent higher than in the US. Welcome to Canada.
Our tax regime does not help either. The baseline is highly successful at chasing away businesses (and people, with taxes upon taxes upon taxes (federal/provincial/city/municipal/consumption)), and the tax code is such a political nightmare that even the CRA’s own advisors often can’t interpret it properly (speaking from frustrating hours of experience). All these things add up.
We can’t attract industry like that, and we can’t supply the world if our other regulatory boat anchors aren’t hoisted. All the MOU press conferences in the world won’t change that.
If we are serious about being a responsible global citizen and helping the world with its fuel supplies, and other natural resources, that has to be the cornerstone of government programs. National priorities, not national options ‘if they fit in the ideological framework’.
Remember back in 2023 when Japan came over and politely asked if we could supply them with natural gas, and we scolded them about carbon until they went away? Well, just this past week, Japan signed a $56 billion energy deal with the US. That will continue to happen unless we get serious as a country about the whole idea of foreign investment as a driver of growth, and not public spending.
Our current federal leader wrote an entire book less than five years ago in which he pledged complete and utter allegiance to an ideological framework. But he also seems pragmatic enough to grasp that the path to that nirvana is not what he envisioned when creating the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero as a mechanism to starve the hydrocarbon industry of capital and insurance.
It is definitely not easy to walk back you Value(s). But the world really needs that to happen. Literally needs it, as in…we need fuel. As soon as possible.
There is an eastern European saying that “Fear has big eyes.” Investing is the same. Investors see all that bureaucratic junk, and go elsewhere.
At the peak of the energy wars, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity challenged the narrative of imminent fossil fuel demise, facing into the storm. And now everyone is coming around to this realization as well. Read the energy story for those that don’t live in the energy world, but want to find out. And laugh. Available at Amazon.ca, Indigo.ca, or Amazon.com.29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
Terry’s personal energy site, Public Energy Number One, is on hiatus until there are more hours in the day.)
Great article! Much appreciation for 47 here in the States.
My favorite quote – “Have some green hydrogen instead, our leader lectured, despite the inconvenient problem of developing an imaginary industry from scratch that is just incomprehensibly uneconomic from any vantage point.” Similar here in NY, as we sit idly on huge deposits of natural gas in the Marcellus and Utica shale formations.
We can ship nice clean propane but not dirty black oil even though US tankers from Alaska go down the coast 14 miles away….and other U.S. crude goes down the St. Lawrence to Montreal refineries on the other coast…. thanks to the tanker restrictions put in place by the Idiot King, Turdeau, solely for the purpose, supposedly, of restricting oil companies from emitting too much C02 and protecting Kermode bears on pipeline right-of-ways.
Headline in Calgary 8 days ago — A tanker carrying 600000 barrels of Canadian propane was resold at least five times while at sea after leaving B.C.
you can bet Canadians didn’t get any profits out of those resales….but the next shipload will be a different story….
There’s a lot of unshackling going on- (The Australian 23/3/2026)
Rio Tinto has disbanded its dedicated decarbonisation unit under sweeping changes implemented by chief executive Simon Trott aimed at running a leaner miner.
The resources giant on Friday declined to comment on how many jobs have been axed, or how many more may go, as Mr Trott headed to China for customer discussions that will likely include iron ore pricing and contract arrangements, and Rio’s contingency plans to keep its mines operating amid the growing threat to diesel supply. …………
Under Mr Trott’s leadership, Rio has already slashed its budget for decarbonisation projects from $US7.5bn to between $US1bn-$US2bn out to 2030.
Mr Trott’s reset at Rio mirrors moves by BHP chief executive Mike Henry, who in 2024 shed white collar jobs in Australia, and elsewhere, as part of a major restructure of global operations that involved disbanding specialist teams in decarbonisation, heritage, mine planning, maintenance and logistics.
Why are they still spending the $1-2 billion on decarbonizatioin?
Green washing and virtue signalling. Having some green effort for political posturing.
“Great words, hey? All part of the human condition. All of us suck, in this regard, at some time or other. Best practice, as a human, is to just become cognizant of this trap we all fall into.”
That trap is called “peer-review”, or that’s a big part of it.
“Remember back in 2023 when Japan came over and politely asked if we could supply them with natural gas, and we scolded them about carbon until they went away? Well, just this past week, Japan signed a $56 billion energy deal with the US. That will continue to happen unless we get serious as a country about the whole idea of foreign investment as a driver of growth, and not public spending.“
This is what gets me about individual countries, or individual states here in the US, where they race to fall on the sword of climate change austerity, thinking that it will matter a hill of beans when the rest of the world will just keep on doing their own thing. If you cut off Japan, in this instance, they’ll come to us. Your so-called planetary nobility just got canceled, and your own citizens got hurt. This is ongoing from Eureka to Europe.
The left wants to destroy the west by any and all means.
An interesting result in the South Australian State election on Saturday has rattled the pickets of the left Labor/Greens and decimated the Conservative Coalition who like UK Tories had become Labor lite-
From The Australian (23/3/2026)
Labor needs a clear economic case for migration and must put the question of “are you for Australia?” before appealing to sneering progressives, South Australian election victor Peter Malinauskas has declared, as he counsels Anthony Albanese and fellow ALP premiers that they must all play a central role in repelling the One Nation surge.
As the Liberals grapple with the existential threat of Pauline Hanson’s populist party destroying it nationwide, Mr Malinauskas says the challenge of winning voters away from One Nation is a two-party challenge.
After he won Labor’s biggest victory in South Australian and entered the pantheon of ALP election heroes, Mr Malinauskas on Sunday said a laser focus on increasing housing supply and “growing the pie” economically for all Australians was the best response to populism.
The Prime Minister on Sunday signalled he was ready to attack Senator Hanson head on, claiming in Melbourne there were “political forces” that sought to turn the clock back to the days of the White Australia policy.
Those pesky populists aren’t too thrilled by Bondi massacres among other woke matters and it’s beginning to show.
That was a great speech by Trump!
Not really. What was going on in Canada for a decade was only to some degree about climate change virtue-signaling. Most of it was about the perpetual war between the federal LPC and whomever was the government of Alberta over control of Canada’s oil and gas. This has been going on since 1982 and Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Program. Going a bit further back, it started with Pierre Trudeau’s imposition of wage and price controls over the entire country.
This has been a war over money and power. Climate was to some degree simply the excuse, except for the handful of true-believers in Trudeau’s cabinet. The most worthless of these have been dumped out of cabinet or fled the country for other jobs by Prime Minister Mark Carney.
17 trillion of investment is coming into the US.
Terry, Great piece. Thanks for showing us the dark dungeon of Canadian bureaucracy?
Canada is a lot more protectionist than the superficial media types will ever look into. It’s called nontariff barriers to trade, and a lot of countries are very good at it.
It’s entertaining in a way to watch Carney trying to pull off a triple back-flip with pike over his “Values” that were oh-so-woke just a few years ago.
Groucho would be impressed
(“These are my principles. But if you don’t like them, I have others . . . )
I’m hoping that the newbie (clean-skin?) energy minister Tim Hodgson can shake off the Trudeau-Carney idiocy and get cracking with some sensible energy developments.
It’s the incredible shift from his strong anti-hydrocarbon stance that was apparent mere months ago (despite the MOU with Alberta) that justifies skepticism about Carney’s supposed conversion to promoting Canadian energy. He’s great at saying sensible things that often mirror the Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre, but corresponding action is rare.
California and New York both have substantial oil and gas reserves and clearly imminent disaster has not moved them. Not optimistic for good Canadians but I hope for the best.
Afraid it’s even worse. If either state tries to do anything rational like drilling, laying pipelines, not closing fossil fuel power plants, etc., there are enough leftwing ideologues to tie projects up for years in court, suing for numerous different reasons. And there are enough lower court leftwing judges to rule in their favor many times. It is really too late for Maryland, Oregon, and California. Time is running out for New York and Virginia, putting the entire Pennsylvania Maryland New Jersey (PMJ) grid in jeopardy.
As long as Canada continues to elect indecisive governments that actually believe that Net Zero is attainable and continues to vacillate on resource development, it will continue to fail to exploit its potential. That type of stalling and its failure to address its increasing military impotence and high consumer debt levels will only continue to its reputation as a nation that’s mainly talk with little action.
No one in the federal government believes any of that tripe. Only two national political parties give Net Zero any credence. The Green Party of Canada whose national political support is zero. And the New Demcratic Party which has vanished into non-party status because of it
Canada’s total carbon dioxide emissions in 2023 were 694 megatonnes. Canada has 318 billion trees, each capable of absorbing 25 kg of carbon dioxide annually. Canada’s trees collectively absorb 7.95 trillion kilograms of CO2 annually, or 7,950 megatonnes. Canada is already well beyond “Net Zero” and strongly carbon negative, as its trees readily absorb more than 10 times the CO2 Canada produces.
The Carney (the grey man, the Liberal PM of Canada) has sort of, kind of, decided that maybe, just maybe, there can be a pipeline to export gas through BC, provided, that is, every ‘indigenous’ tribal group agrees (and gets their blood money). But oil? No, as that is dirty and there is a tanker ban off the coast of BC that Justin Perry (nee Trudeau) implemented, and the Liberals will not say if that will be lifted, so no one is putting up money for an oil pipeline just yet (while oil tankers traverse the area from Alaska just outside the 12 mile limit).
Oil for the east coast and Quebec has to be imported though, and the Quebec government, while sitting on oceans of gas it won’t frack, imports oil from many places while blocking a pipeline. There could have been a pipeline to tidewater, but Justin blocked that and The Carney remains mum, so not even a proposal to get oil to beyond Montreal is viable.
Does anyone expect that The Carney, a global elite who until recently believed oil was done and could be replaced by windmills/solar panel/wishful thinking, will actually assist Canada by pushing for more pipelines? I don’t.
“Sadly, it takes big negative shocks to the system to shatter complacency.”
This is my perception of Trump’s tactics. In order to create real change one has to disrupt the status quo. People do not like change, they fear it, it is an evolutionary species survival trait. Trump was elected the first time to be disruptive. He is much more effective in that regard in his second term.
A bit more than half of Canadians are opposed to any resource development or productive industry or successful business of any kind. Especially educated people. Marxism is taught in the schools. More free stuff is all that is needed.
Politicians represent them.
Our biggest problem is out of control government. Get the government under control and we have solved our energy problem.
British Columbia has doomed its, and Canada’s economies, by enacting UNDRIP as law. Indigenous permission is required for all resource development projects.