Post-truth nonsense about fossil fuels paints a dangerous, damaging and distorted picture of Canada's energy use and production
One of the unfortunate legacies of 2016 is the frequency of ‘post-truth’ communications. The term describes communications where objective facts are replaced by erroneous assertions aimed at creating emotion-based beliefs. Post-truth communications reached a peak during the American presidential campaign. But Canadians have also seen an escalation of post-truth communications, particularly in relation to energy.…
Pricing carbon is based on Canada joining a worldwide effort, but going it alone while partners refuse is a triumph of ideology over reason
Canada's political and business leaders are pursuing an emissions-reduction agenda that will harm our nation's citizens and our economy. And it's an agenda that defies prevailing world trends. The COP 22 Marrakech Climate Change Conference began on Nov. 7 and included pro-emissions-reduction delegations from Canada and the United States. Imagine their shock when, just 24 hours later, they…
Canadian leaders need to be prepared to defend NAFTA and its economic value whoever wins the U.S. presidential election
Whatever the outcome of the tumultuous U.S. presidential election, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will come under pressure. Republican candidate Donald Trump has asserted that NAFTA has caused the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs to Mexico. And concessions to Bernie Sanders, the left-leaning runner-up in the Democratic primaries, pushed Hillary Clinton to take…
Vancouver's Robertson and Montreal's Coderre are front and centre when it comes to policy pronouncements that are dangerously delusional
Mayor Gregor Robertson wants Vancouver to be “the world’s greenest city by 2020.” That's a laudable goal, provided the path is rooted in sound science and economics, rather than a religious belief in a carbon-free heaven. The first step, narrowing already-busy streets in favour of bike lanes, is infuriating drivers while their gridlocked cars increase…
Expanding our trade relationship with China is unlikely to give us any significant economic, environmental or human rights leverage
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s trip to China prompted speculation that it was the first step towards a free-trade agreement. The basic principle of free trade is clear. Imagine two isolated neighbouring islands. One is green and fertile, capable of producing more food than it can consume. The other, while dry and barren, possesses natural resources…
The zero-emissions bio-fuel myth ignores the horrible environmental impacts of its production and the dramatic impact on world food stocks
Are bio-fuels really greener than the fossil fuels they displace? My last column pointed out that electric cars are only as green as the fuel used to generate the electricity they consume. For internal combustion-powered vehicles, much of the focus has been on reducing carbon emissions by adding ethanol to gasoline and vegetable oil to diesel.…
Don't be fooled by the claims of the pro-electric car camp – our best bet for low-emissions vehicles is still natural gas
Does the car of the future really need to be electric to be environmentally responsible? On a recent trip to Hawaii, the car service sent a beautiful Tesla to pick us up at the airport. The driver told us how proud he was to be driving a “zero-emissions” vehicle. This prompted me to ask him…
Tying any single extreme weather event to atmospheric CO2 concentrations simply isn’t historically or scientifically credible
The collapse of global commodity prices was sudden and severe. Workers coming off a decade of unprecedented prosperity suddenly found themselves jobless and unable to provide for their beleaguered families. For a time, they maintained hope that the downturn would be temporary, but as the first year stretched into the second, many lost hope. Some…
Almost inevitably, we don't get value from taxpayer-funded ventures
Canadian governments regularly fund corporate ventures, but it is invariably money poorly spent. Bombardier Inc. received its first federal subsidy of $36.9 million back in 1966 from Prime Minister Lester Pearson’s governing Liberals. The Montreal-headquartered company has since received Industry Canada funding of more $1.1 billion, plus another $1.1 billion that the federal agency poured into…
Deficit spending by the Trudeau government will simply slow our recovery and handicap future generations
The federal government’s planned $30-billion budget deficit, to be followed by three more deficits totalling $113 billion, brings to mind former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s observation that “It’s not often that nations learn from the past, even rarer that they draw the correct conclusions from it.” The budget deficit is triple the “modest”…
One of the unfortunate legacies of 2016 is the frequency of ‘post-truth’ communications. The term describes communications where objective facts are replaced by erroneous assertions aimed at creating emotion-based beliefs. Post-truth communications reached a peak during the American presidential campaign. But Canadians have also seen an escalation of post-truth communications, particularly in relation to energy.…
