Canada’s recovery will depend on government policies that actively encourage, rather than impede, resource investment
Albertans are living a five-year nightmare that just keeps getting worse. The nightmare started in 2015 when newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Gerald Butts, head of the Canadian arm of the anti-fossil-fuel World Wildlife Fund, as his principal secretary and key adviser. A year later, Trudeau cancelled the previously approved Northern Gateway Pipeline destined…
Canada’s hopelessly dysfunctional and dangerous government-monopoly health-care system one of the least prepared in the world to deal with the crisis
The Liberal government’s plan to use Canada’s “fiscal firepower” to help Canadian families and businesses weather the COVID-19 pandemic has been appropriately termed “a measured well-targeted response” by the Fraser Institute. But no amount of cash can change the terrible reality that Canada’s health-care system is one of the least prepared to deal with the…
In 2015, we gathered in the meeting house of the remote Tl’azt’en First Nation at Tache, 215 km northwest of Prince George, B.C. I was there as volunteer chair of the B.C, Industry Training Authority (ITA), the organization responsible for funding and facilitating trades training in the province. Accompanying me were the ITA CEO and…
The government has compounded the problem of stalled pipeline projects by adopting UNDRIP, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People
In 2014, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a stunning decision with profound impact on the future development of our country. For more than a century, Indigenous title had been limited to the immediate environs around settlements. The court ruling vastly expanded it to “tracts of land that were regularly used for hunting, fishing or…
No other country has so deliberately turned itself into a climate-change martyr. Yet our sacrifices will have no perceptible impact
It’s been almost three decades since delegates from 172 countries, meeting at the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, adopted the Climate Change Convention. U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data show that since then the Earth’s temperature has risen an average of 0.03°C per year. At that rate, the planet will warm 2.4°…
The prospect of a profligate Liberal minority government dependent on the even more financially destructive policies of the NDP is enough to send even more investors scurrying to the exits
The Oct. 21 federal election results confirm that most Canadians have lost all fear of deficit spending, no matter how large. That’s a serious problem for the nation. During the 2015 federal election campaign, the Conservatives led by Stephen Harper proudly announced a no-deficit budget after years of working to rebalance spending and revenues following…
Encana, Canada’s flagship energy company, has now become Americanized, driven south by disastrous Liberal policies
Ed. Note: Gwyn Morgan was the first CEO of Encana when it was formed in 2002. In this Nov. 22, 2018 column, the respected oil pioneer outlines the federal regulatory impediments that are driving companies to leave our country. With the announcement this week that Encana is rebranding and heading to the U.S., the column…
Prairie towns and villages are becoming relics of the past. Formerly bustling main streets are lined with boarded-up businesses, inhabited by aging retirees who carry the memories of a bygone era
What do you think is Canada’s riskiest business? Childhood on our family farm taught me the answer to that question. Despite years of heartbreaking disappointments, my father was a perfect example of the adage “hope springs eternal.” Each spring, he would sing happily on our tractor while seeding wheat, barley and oats. Then we hoped…
The answers to some questions to help you assess whether there really is a climate emergency
With energy and the environment playing an important role in the fall election, Canadians face starkly different policy positions from political parties, together with a bewildering array of both information and disinformation. Here is my rather eclectic list of little-known facts, head-scratching paradoxes and utter hypocrisy. Climate Emergency On June 17, the House of Commons…
How does a Liberal government that can’t campaign on its abysmal record go about gaining re-election?
As the federal election approaches, the Liberal government’s record has become increasingly more difficult to defend. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise in the last election that he would run only ‘modest’ deficits has burgeoned into a national debt increase that is bigger per person than that racked up by any government in Canadian history, outside…
With Gerald Butts and others at the epicentre of power, it’s no wonder the oil industry has plummeted into purgatory
Canadians watch Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election comfortable in the belief that such foreign interference couldn’t happen here. Except it did happen here. And while the Russians adamantly deny interference in American political affairs, the perpetrators of interference in the 2015 Canadian federal election not only devised and…
Oil and gas contributed some $117 billion to Canada’s GDP last year, six times the economic contribution of the Ontario auto industry
What was Canada’s biggest business news story of 2018? According to the pundits at The Canadian Press, it wasn’t the giveaway of Canadian oil to Americans for tens of billions of dollars below world prices, caused by a lack of pipelines from Alberta. It wasn’t the loss of tens of billions more in oil and…
Trying to solve a problem with the wrong solution will inevitably lead to failure
With polls showing the Liberals in a tight contest with the Conservatives, the Trudeau government needed to find a defining issue that will carry them to victory in next October’s election. From the beginning of his mandate, this Prime Minister has made lowering carbon emissions a centerpiece of his government’s raison d’etre. Trudeau promised an approach…
The court decision against the pipeline veered away from objective legal analysis into opinions designed to justify preconceived biases
For the second time in two years, three judges with the Federal Court of Appeal struck down a crucially important oil export pipeline project that had undergone years of regulatory review. The approval of Northern Gateway by the former federal government of Conservative Stephen Harper was struck down in 2016. That was after Enbridge spent…
We need a smart, realistic strategy for negotiations, starting with giving up our dairy supply management system
The importance of the North American Free Trade Agreement to Canada’s economy is staggering. Each day, $2.4 billion worth of goods and services cross the Canada/U.S. border. Some 78 per cent of Canada’s merchandise exports are destined for NAFTA partners. Now, the 23-year-old agreement is under severe threat from a hyper-protectionist American president. Initially, NAFTA…
Albertans are living a five-year nightmare that just keeps getting worse. The nightmare started in 2015 when newly-elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Gerald Butts, head of the Canadian arm of the anti-fossil-fuel World Wildlife Fund, as his principal secretary and key adviser. A year later, Trudeau cancelled the previously approved Northern Gateway Pipeline destined…
