LILLEY: Carney and his economic policies wrong for the time we are in

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Canada should be an energy superpower and we should be selling our products around the world. Sadly, we aren’t and that’s one of the reasons our economy is so dependent on the United States and so vulnerable to Donald Trump’s tariff and trade threats.

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If we had greater ability to move the main economic driver in this country — oil and gas — to markets other than the United States, then Trump’s tariffs would hurt but not be potentially devastating.

The problem is that government policy decisions over the past decade and more have ensured that we have not expanded our ability to move oil and gas to tidewater. The Trudeau Liberals effectively cancelled the Northern Gateway and Energy East pipeline projects that would have given Canada the ability to sell to Europe and Asia rather than be landlocked, selling almost all our oil at a discount to the Americans.

They did this through adding on regulations that no other projects had faced, including in the case of Energy East, giving Quebec a veto on the project.

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On selling liquified natural gas (LNG), the Liberals have rejected all but one project brought forward since they came to office. Governments from Japan, Greece, Germany and France have asked for our natural gas but the Trudeau government said there was no business case.

That’s unlikely to change under new Liberal Leader and Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Carney has spoken several times about making Canada a superpower in conventional, read oil and gas, and clean energy. He’s hinted at possible support for pipelines going from west to east in this country but has never been clear — except in French when he clearly says no.

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During his news conference in London on Monday, Carney was asked in French by reporter Emilie Bergeron of Canadian Press about attempts to sell LNG to Europe in order to diversify markets.

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“Did you talk about LNG projects? And what timeline have you set for infrastructure projects to be built here in Canada? Two or three years?” Bergeron asked.

Carney immediately said it’s not up to him.

“I am open to East West projects, but that is not my decision. It’s not up to me to make that decision. There has to be a project, as you mentioned, a real project, not just a concept. And that requires the support of the provinces, of the First Nations,” Carney said.

There is some truth to that, there does need to be a project proposed and there would need to be consultations with First Nations, but the federal government doesn’t need provincial permission for national infrastructure projects.

Politically, though, Carney recently promised Quebec a veto.

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A real leader on this file would also say, yes, when we have these projects, we need to get them approved and built fast. Canada’s horrible reputation on project delays, never-ending reviews, and changing regulations is why so much investment has moved south to the United States over the last decade.

Finally, Carney made the argument that to be able to sell into the European Union, Canada needs an industrial carbon tax. We already have one and it will go up by nearly 20% on April 1 and Carney wants it to go even higher.

The problem with his claim, and so much of what Carney says, is that it simply isn’t true.

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The top suppliers of natural gas and liquified natural gas to Europe are as follows: Norway, United States, Algeria, Russia, United Kingdom, and Qatar. Only Norway and the U.K. have a carbon tax, none of the others do, nor do other suppliers of oil and gas to the EU such as Libya, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq.

Carney has spent the last decade preaching the idea of “green finance,” which seeks to use banking regulations to force the world off oil and gas, something that won’t be possible for decades to come. His book Value(s), essentially his blueprint for how the economy, Canada’s in particular, should run, calls for mandates to end oil and gas and the use of the financial system to achieve that goal.

Given the moment we are in, Mark Carney and his policies are clearly the wrong ones — that he didn’t raise selling our resources to the Europeans on his trip and that he continues to give Quebec a veto on pipelines only prove this point.

blilley@postmedia.com

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