Canada's proposed east-west energy corridors should prioritize clean energy
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson has gone even further in pushing for subsidization of carbon capture and storage projects that would effectively underwrite the long-term continuation of the fossil fuel industry at taxpayer expense.
While there might be short-term political reasons for backing fossil fuels, such an approach goes against Canada's long-term interests. Prioritizing fossil fuels undermines the country's commitments to reduce emissions and takes away the investment needed for it to realize its potential to become a green energy superpower.
Creating energy corridors is in the national interest, and would allow Canada to take full advantage of its abundant and diverse energy and mineral resources. The government also needs to be involved, as the corridors are interprovincial and will require substantial investment. However, the government has limited resources and so Canada must think strategically about its priorities for such corridors.
Canadian taxpayers should not be subsidizing an already lucrative oil and gas industry. Instead, the federal government should prioritize funding clean energy supply solutions.
Canadian governments have long faced opposition to building new pipelines. The provinces of Quebec and British Columbia and many First Nations have strongly opposed new pipeline proposals. More recently, there is some signs of softening under the duress of U.S. tariffs.
Even if such shifts are lasting, it's for the private sector to step up and invest into these projects. Previous federal investments, such as the Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), were reflections of the private market's unwillingness to invest in pipelines because they are bad investments. The 2024 Parliamentary Budget Office report estimated that selling the TMX would result in a loss.
There are reasons to question the soundness of fossil fuels on a purely financial basis. A 2022 Parliamentary budget office report found that climate change reduced GDP by 0.8 per cent in 2021, or around $20 billion. This number is expected to rise to 5.8 per cent per year by 2100 (or $145 billion in 2021 dollars).
By contrast, from 2017 to 2021, federal, provincial and territorial governments received an average of $12 billion annually in revenues from the the oil and gas industry.
The gap between the costs and benefits is only going to increase over time. The costs cut across all aspects of life, including food security, health care, global instability and threats to coastal cities due to sea level rise.
On the other hand, every dollar invested in adaptation today has an estimated return of $13-$15.
Furthermore, a recent study indicates a likely glut in global natural gas markets, and the future prospects for oil are equally questionable. For example, one of Canada's target markets, Japan, has been reselling its liquefied natural gas imports to other countries, suggesting the glut of oil and gas is likely to continue as cheaper producers, including those in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, who are cheaper and closer to consumers, flood the market.
Cheaper and closer oil producers are also flooding markets in anticipation of declining prices.
There are important opportunity costs of investing money in fossil fuels that could otherwise be invested in the clean energy economy. When new technologies arise, there is a limited window of opportunity for global competitors to enter into an emerging industry.
In light of the shift to electric vehicles, heat pumps and artificial intelligence, it's clear that energy demand is bound to increase significantly in Canada in the coming years. Canada can become a global competitor, but only if it enters the race now, while the window is open.
Solar and wind prices have declined by 83 per cent and 65 per cent respectively since 2009. However, they suffer from the fundamental issue of intermittency; the sun is not always shining and the wind isn't always blowing.
While battery prices are declining, they remain an expensive solution. An easier solution is at hand: Canada's hydroelectric resources. Quebec, B.C. and Manitoba have abundant hydro resources that can reduce energy costs throughout the rest of the country.
Alberta and Saskatchewan have potential for significant geothermal power generation. Ontario and the Atlantic provinces could contribute wind and solar. Trading electricity through an integrated national grid increases the investment capital and reduces the need for batteries while diversifying the energy mix.
But we need an east-west electricity market to make this happen.
An east-west grid would reduce the need for every province to run its own power generation system. Creating a pooled market would allow provinces to trade electricity, giving consumers more choice and investors a larger market and potential return on their investment.
More valuable still is the fact that electricity capacity has to be built for the few peak hours and seasons. But most of the time demand is well below full capacity, such as the middle of the night or early summer, when neither heat nor air conditioning is needed in many areas. As peak times and seasons vary across the country, Canada can reduce overall costs by trading the electricity in the lowest cost producing province at a given time to where it's needed in the other.
By locating some of the new clean energy in First Nations, Canada can also move reconciliation forward. There is potential for a win-win situation whereby Canada increases renewable energy generation while creating new jobs and income for First Nations wherever feasible.
The first step is for regulatory reform across the provinces to support a Canada-wide electricity market, and to provide the funding for the massive infrastructure investment required to connect provincial grids. This would be a federal investment with incredible long-term payoffs for employment, taxpayers and future generations.
Following this plan could truly make Canada an energy superpower on the right side of the energy transition, create thousands of jobs and give the country a global competitive edge - all while helping to save the planet in the process.
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Republicans complain about smoke. But they voted for fire
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The irony is what's suffocating — while MAGA lawmakers rage at the north for spoiling their barbecues, they're voting to supercharge the very crisis they refuse to name. The sharpest response to the US congresspeople came from Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. He didn't mince words in his response. He called the GOP lawmakers 'ambulance chasers.' It had to be a joke, right? A group of MAGA lawmakers moaning about 'suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke' in a complaint fired off to Canada's ambassador to the US. Someone at The Beaverton or Walking Eagle News must have been feeling snarky. "This is what turns people off politics," Kinew said. "A group of congresspeople trying to trivialize and make hay out of a wildfire season where we've lost lives in our province." That group of congresspeople included Tom Emmer, the GOP's third-highest ranking member and majority whip in the House of Representatives. 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an hour ago
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Canadian far right repeats Trump-fuelled conspiracy theories on wildfires
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Trump-aligned congresspeople aren't spreading wildfire disinformation in a vacuum; American social media giants are enabling a haze of conspiracy theories and misinformation about the wildfires ravaging Canada's forests. Last week, six Trump-allied House Representatives sent a letter to Kirsten Hillman, Canada's ambassador in Washington, asking the country to stop smoke from wildfires from drifting south so Americans can "spend time outdoors recreating, enjoying time with family, and creating new memories." Communities across the northern Prairie provinces and Ontario have been consumed by wildfires in recent months, forcing thousands to evacuate and leaving two people dead in Lac du Bonnet, Manitoba. "This is what turns people off politics," said Wab Kinew, the Manitoba premier in an interview with CBC. "When you've got a group of congresspeople trying to trivialize and make hay out of a wildfire season where we've lost lives in our province." The group laid blame for the "worrisome trend" on "a lack of active forest management" and arson. Four of the signatories — Tom Emmer, Tom Tiffany, Pete Stauber and Brad Finstad — have received at least $408,068 in campaign donations from fossil fuel-linked groups since 2020. "The real arsonists are the ones trying to burn down the truth about extreme weather — and that it's made worse by the burning of fossil fuels," said Khoo. He isn't surprised to see that wildfires and other extreme weather events are frequently targeted with misinformation by conservative commentators, who are often financially linked to the oil and gas sector. These disasters are the clearest examples of climate science being proven right and people being harmed, making them a clear target for far-right disinformation. The glut of conspiracy theories about the fires has roots in a decades-old effort by the fossil fuel industry to sow doubt about climate change. 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Still, this haze of half-truths couldn't spread without the help of social media platforms like X that consistently let climate misinformation spread unhindered. The researchers singled out those companies' moderation efforts — or lack of moderation — as key drivers of the problem, and called on the Canadian government to force them to clean up their act. In the same way Canadian regulators enforce safety rules on products like airplanes or foods, the government can force tech companies to meet certain safety standards. That might be tricky with Trump — earlier this month, federal officials were forced to back down on a proposed digital services tax after the US president threatened to halt trade negotiations with Canada — but Khoo emphasized that stronger rules are essential to sustaining support for climate action, and are supported by the EU and other countries.
National Observer
an hour ago
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Alberta won't increase oil sands monitoring funds to keep pace with industry expansion, inflation
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The funding formula that requires industry to pay up to $50 million annually for the program was developed in 2013 collaboratively by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the Alberta government. Accounting for inflation, what cost $50 million in 2013 should now cost about $66.5 million, the letter signatories write; 'Thus, the overall purchasing power of oilsands monitoring has shrunk roughly 25 per cent, while the oil sands industry has nearly doubled in size.' The signatories added that this runs contrary to the polluter-pays principle. This principle in Canadian law says companies or people that pollute are responsible to pay the costs they impose on society to protect the public from the cost of pollution, for example, oil spill cleanup and lasting impacts. In 2018, royalty revenues were $3.2 billion. In 2023, that number reached a staggering $16.9 billion, according to the letter. 'Arbitrary cuts to monitoring programs, such as the proposed major reductions in wetlands and biodiversity, put the effectiveness of the monitoring at risk,' according to the letter. Why the oilsands needs monitoring The Indigenous representatives pushed to prioritize fully funding community-based monitoring programs and core monitoring programs which meant cuts to other important programs. 'Arbitrary cuts to monitoring programs, such as the proposed major reductions in wetlands and biodiversity, put the effectiveness of the monitoring at risk,' according to the letter. 'For severely compromised programs, we would rather that no monitoring occur instead of poor monitoring. Poor monitoring does not provide any value to the communities, nor to the public, but instead provides a veneer of having addressed concerns in these areas.' Ryan Fournier, press secretary for Alberta Minister Environment and Protected Areas Rebecca Schulz, said it is 'misleading' to describe it as programming cuts because the request for $73 million in funding encompassed '53 different work plans, including requests that are duplicative, overlapping or even potentially conflicting.' Fournier did not provide specific examples of duplicative or conflicting work plans. There is a $3 million discrepancy between the amount of requested funding Alberta provided and the figure cited in the letter. When asked to respond to the fact that both inflation and oilsands expansion are outpacing the available funding, Fournier said the oil sands monitoring program 'is the biggest program of its kind in the world,' and said its budget 'has risen over $5 million since 2022, and has the funding needed to continue delivering for Albertans.' According to Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) spokesperson Hannah Boonstra, the funding was increased by $4.5 million this year "to utilize surplus funds accumulated from underspending in previous years.' The historic underspending is due to a range of factors, including COVID-19 and associated slowdowns on work plan approval, hiring and contracting delays, overestimating costs, consolidating work, approval delays and more, according to the annual reports. ECCC and Alberta Environment and Protected Areas co-chair the oil sands monitoring program but the federal government was in caretaker mode for the 2025 election and did not sign off on the final annual monitoring plan to avoid delays, Boonstra's statement noted. 'Since the Government of Alberta is financially accountable for the program, the province approves the financial elements of the monitoring plan,' Boonstra said. Last year, nearly $540,000 went to Cold Lake First Nation for community-based monitoring to examine how the oilsands industry is impacting a variety of factors, including water quality, berry abundance, fisheries health, muskrats and pitcher plants, to name a few. Interest in community-based monitoring like this is growing, the letter noted, and 'as new communities are onboarded, this forces us to choose between existing Western science initiatives and the needs of Indigenous communities.' This interest will likely keep growing while funding remains stagnant and 'we cannot offer a path forward for those programs and encourage communities to submit proposals, but then largely ignore the requests,' the letter reads.
