Ross McKitrick You might have thought the Russo-Ukrainian War would have convinced the Trudeau government to hit pause on its climate-change plans. Europeans are suddenly desperate to find other sources of energy so they can scale back imports from Russia. We can’t help them, unfortunately, because of our long embrace of the don’t-build-anything-anywhere school of economic development. But the United States can, using its liquified natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure. That means the U.S. must import more to make up for what it diverts out of its domestic market. Where will they look? To us, among other places. That’s what we used to call an opportunity.
Not anymore. Instead, Ottawa has just released a 271-page Emission Reduction Plan (ERP) that calls on our oil and gas sector to cut emissions by 31 per cent below 2005 levels in the next eight years, which is 42 per cent below current levels. It also wants the sector to get to “net-zero” by 2050. Given the current technological limits of carbon capture and other buzzwords, that means either ceasing operations altogether or using production methods that will price producers out of the world market — thus leaving a clear field for Russia, among others, to expand its dominance in world energy markets in the years ahead. Global emissions won’t decline mind you; people will just get their energy from dictators while democracies such as Canada exit the market.
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