Margareta Dovgal: The cost of Carney’s energy-sector sabotage is staggering

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Carney’s government has an urgent imperative here: determine what form “climate leadership” can really take if we accept the reality of being a major resource producer that must compete for limited global capital.

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My own province offers a neat example of this tendency to inflict wounds on our most productive industries over outdated dreams of climate leadership. British Columbia’s electricity grid is strained. We have been a net importer of electricity for three straight years, much of it from the United States. As we grow production of liquefied natural gas, it makes no sense to force companies to draw electricity from a constrained grid to power production instead of using a fuel they already have on hand. It just makes it necessary to funnel public money towards expanding that grid, in this case, a northwest transmission line made necessary by this policy constraint.

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It would be comparable for the federal government declaring a National Bicycle Tire Slashing Strategy, then pairing it with a massive, ostensibly nation-building Bicycle Tire Repair Fund, with eligible recipients required to persuade a panel of non-cyclists that they are equipped for the Tour de France. Imagine the jobs that would be created, we would hear! Imagine how competitive Canada would become in bike tire repair. Imagine all the votes from the bike repair and bike slasher lobbies!

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There is, of course, a simpler path: save the taxpayer money and leave the bikes alone.

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Federal climate policies for our most productive industries in 2026 are, in effect, just as Kafkaesque.

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Proponents without a national-interest designation instead face a costly and lengthy federal assessment, a provincial assessment duplicating the first, and the risk of arbitrary rejection if the federal cabinet decides the project isn’t aligned with its opaque political goals.

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The agreement between the feds and Alberta that suspends the federal clean electricity regulations in that province is another stellar example of this unintelligibility, as is the move to fast-track major projects through the Major Projects Office.

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Political interference, embedded in our major projects process since the National Energy Board era, and now reinforced twice under two Liberal governments, is deeply inefficient. It is also antithetical to the principles of a competitive market economy from which Canada’s prosperity has always flowed. Results should come through a functioning, competitive regulatory system, not in spite of the mess we still have now.

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With it, affordability through energy policy, more than just in the price at the pump, is possible. High incomes and strong productivity make life affordable for Canadians. Cutting an unproductive cost lowers a price. More valuable is that it frees capital to do something useful: to build an energy sector that competes, attracts investment and puts Canadians to work.

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There are hundreds of billions in possible investment that fast-tracking won’t ever be able to touch. The price is workers never hired, and towns whose wages stall because projects got built elsewhere.

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Rather than subsidize around a self-inflicted barrier, remove the barrier. Where the system is driving towards contradictory goals, rebuild the full system.

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Canada has the means to become an energy superpower. That ambition demands a regulatory superhighway approach: make “one project, one review” a statutory default rather than a project-by-project decision, strip the cabinet veto C-69 preserved and the override power C-5 stacked on top of it, scrap the industrial carbon price and wind down the Major Projects Office on a fixed date once the baseline process is fast enough to make it pointless.

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We have good reason to be proud of our world-leading energy sector. Regrettably, the most decisive competitive advantage still belongs to those with the craftiest government relations strategies and the largest compliance departments.

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What an odd thing to optimize for. It’s almost as though the most valuable national product is handshakes and paperwork, not the raw materials the world actually needs.

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National Post

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Margareta Dovgal is Managing Director of Resource Works Society.

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