Rex Murphy
National Post, Jan. 20, 2022
“Why does the government of Canada profess we have a “duty” to the world to work towards eradicating the energy supply and system that we already have, that has mostly served us well, that has brought fortune and security to the nation?”
I’ll go to the biggest one right off the bat: Why and how has the “goal” of getting to net-zero emissions become such a doctrine?
Another way of phrasing the same question is: What’s so wrong, what’s so defective in our current energy system that the Liberal government has pledged, as its absolute priority, to replace it?
Having a secure and tested energy system is a very big deal for any nation, but having a secure and tested energy supply is the quintessential necessity for a vast northern country — really vast — that is also the home of a wealthy, modern economy.
Having a secure and tested energy supply is a quintessential necessity
A subsidiary question is: Does the government of a Confederation have the right, the legislative competence to declare the central industry of one of the provinces within that Confederation outmoded? And on that premise make it a national policy to destroy the economic well-being of that province?
And on that question, if one steps back just a minute, is it not amazing, incredible even, that shutting down the industrial base of an entire province is declared as the Number one priority, one laden with moral as well as political content by those in Ottawa who have elevated it to national policy — and this is accepted as normal or acceptable or yes, even noble in the context of “our fight against global warming?”
Is it really acceptable in our Confederation to single out one province to bear the majority weight and economic devastation of this “fight?”
The real and overriding question, however, is why does Canada, or more accurately, why does the government of Canada profess we have a “duty” to the world to work towards eradicating the energy supply and system that we already have, that has mostly served us well, that has brought fortune and security to the nation? Why is the energy future of Canada under the ethos and edicts of the United Nations’ IPCC?
What is this world we have a “duty” towards? Should we ransack our current energy platform because we have a duty to — say, Russia? Or, more tellingly, does Canada have a moral obligation to shut down the oilsands, antagonize all of Alberta (and jeopardize the national economy with its futuristic visions of a “great transition”), because we have a “duty” towards China? Were we to ask the leaders of the great country of India, who are very much not on side with this same IPCC, whether Canada has an obligation, a “duty” to Delhi to shut down Fort McMurray, they would probably throw up their hands in astonishment that the question is even being put to them.
This “duty” that I insist on keeping in quotation marks, as far as I can tell is one self-declared and self-imposed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and flows from his obsessive conviction that he — along with previous adviser Gerry Butts, climate crusader/previous environment minister Catherine McKenna, and previous Greenpeace activist/current environment minister Steven Guilbeault — must be a “leader” in the holy war against global warming.
On substance, Canada can do nothing substantial about global warming. Cancelling the economy of Calgary will not stop the disappearance of the glaciers, lower the sea levels off the Maldives, or rescue one skinny polar bear off a well-photographed ice-floe.
You may have noticed Canada has stalled its economy for over two years and has likely seen the immiseration of thousands of small businesses, restaurants and services. We have also piled on gargantuan deficits and debt — they are both at historic levels. We are seeing wealth-destroying inflation at levels unseen since the early ’90s. We’re still in this mismanaged and liberty-choking COVID crisis playing havoc with the economy.
So there is another not-much-asked question: Is the current state of Canada one in which the government, by fiat, with the assent of every political party, should conduct the greatest re-engineering of the fundamentals of the nation’s most essential and fundamental industry?
The summary question is: Why are we on this useless, damaging crusade? I know it’s very much in opposition to the current liturgy to put the question, but why does Canada have any special or even routine obligation to the “world” — or more precisely the mandarins who gather in Paris and Rio and Glasgow — to wreck our working economy in pursuit of some wild notion that this country can function on a forest of windmills (parts from China) and glazed hectares of solar panels?
The global-warming obsession of this current government is the most absurd and senseless fixation of any government since Sir John A. set us up as a country.
Why are we on this useless, damaging crusade?
The greatest part of that absurdity is how easily all bend to it, all speak the pious words of “net zero” as if they were summoning a genie, as our deluded leaders prate in foreign capitals about the brave new world they are about to call into being.
The same leaders who can’t manage a payroll system, dig a few wells and provide clean water, who shut down Parliament but party abroad with maskless faces laughing at jokes — of which I suspect we are the butt.
They do not have the intellectual competence to engineer this “transition.” As a minority government they do not have the mandate either.
Yet witness the ease with which the press, academia and all who might be regarded as “thought leaders” — a dubious category at the best of times, but dismal at the present — are all abundantly, fervidly on board.
Canada has no “duty” to the world in this farcical pursuit of “net zero” and we will gravely injure our county if we don’t desist. And, once again I caution, we will drive a wedge in Confederation if a policy that treats Alberta as a scapegoat and forces it to carry the burden of an Ottawa obsession, is not abandoned.
Conclusion: Canada should take itself out of all international agreements on global warming.
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