EDITORIAL: Fossil fuels key to Canada’s future

Survey shows a majority of Canadians believe economic growth should take priority over environmental protection in energy policy

Published May 11, 2026  •  Last updated 3 minutes ago  •  2 minute read

Pieces of the Trans Mountain Pipeline project sit in a storage lot outside Hope, B.C., June 6, 2021. Photo by COLE BURSTON / AFP / FILES /Getty Images

The age of fossil fuels is back and this time Canada can’t afford to miss it. 

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For a decade under the Justin Trudeau Liberals, Canada’s vast oil and natural gas resources were falsely portrayed as demonic engines of global destruction, while those concerned with ensuring Canada’s energy security were maliciously demonized as climate deniers. 

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Green radicals — some in the Trudeau cabinet — proclaimed that the age of fossil fuels was ending while naively advocating for unreliable and intermittent sources of green energy to replace them like wind and solar power. 

The Trudeau government’s lack of enthusiasm for fossil fuel energy — save for buying the TMX oil pipeline and approving LNG Canada, when so much more could have been done to ship our natural resources abroad over the past decade — became an anchor on Canadian prosperity. 

Today, ongoing political and military conflicts have demonstrated that energy security is vital to Canadian sovereignty and our ability to chart our own economic course, without being dependent on any other nation. 

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As an Angus Reid survey released Monday reported, Canadian “priorities have shifted significantly … especially in the wake of the economic threats from U.S. President Donald Trump.” 

The survey found growing support for oil and gas pipelines, with 61% of Canadians believing economic growth should take priority over environmental protection in energy policy, compared to 39% supporting the reverse. 

That’s a 16-point shift from 2019, when 55% favoured environmental protection and 45% economic growth.

Even with a simplistic question being asked, the dramatic change in public opinion is clear. 

In fact, Canada can help improve the environment globally by reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions through replacing coal-fired electricity with low-emitting Canadian natural gas and non-emitting Canadian nuclear power technology. 

That’s what the former Liberal government of Ontario did, achieving one of the world’s largest and fastest reductions in emissions by replacing coal-fired electricity generation, responsible for powering 25% of the Ontario grid in 11 years (2003-14,) primarily using nuclear power and natural gas.

The irony is that today, with Prime Minister Mark Carney pledging to make Canada a conventional and green energy superpower, his major opponents aren’t the Conservatives, but holdovers from the Trudeau-era making the same anti-growth arguments they’ve been spouting for a decade. 

It’s time to stop listening to them. 

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