Trudeau's climate "leadership" is tearing Canada apart

[Anonymous]

It's part of the reason why investment is fleeing Canada, Canadian families are feeling the pain of fuel poverty, exports suffer, good full time jobs are not being created and adding to our deficit woes.



From Sun News Media



Climate leadership is tearing Canada apart.



Geographical regions are divided, First Nations' groups are divided, governments are divided, political parties are divided, families are divided.



In the past, almost all Canadians supported the great national projects that created today's prosperity — the cross-Canada railroads, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the great hydro-electricity projects of B.C., Quebec, Manitoba and Newfoundland/Labrador.



Today, Canada's biggest potential prosperity-builder is construction of new or expanded pipelines and new ocean ports to export Western Canadian oil and natural gas to Eastern Canada, Asia, Europe and the USA.



But these pipelines have become the central battleground, the symbolic line in the sand, between those convinced too much CO2 (from the burning of fossil fuels) is causing world-destroying global warming, and the more moderate view that CO2 levels can be stabilized, then lowered, through a mix of renewable energy and the "greening" of carbon-based fuels through applied science.



I was back-packing with friends in the Rockies last weekend. Smoke from some 550 forest fires in B.C. enveloped the mountains in a ghostly dry mist.



Some in the group were convinced the forest fires were caused by global warming – that the B.C. forests are so dry (and thus burnable) due to climate change. Huge forest fires would be in the summer norm in British Columbia for the foreseeable future.



Others, more moderate, suggested the main culprit was not climate change, but better forest-fire suppression and the pine beetle.  Suppressing forest fires through early detection had led to a build-up of dry kindling on the forest floor. Meanwhile, the vast tree-killing pine-beetle infestation has led to millions of dry-as-a-bone dead trees. When the forest did catch fire – which is part of the forest cycle – it really caught on fire.



There seems to be no middle ground. These two views oppose each other, and they show up everywhere.



You can feel the uneasiness between the two camps within Alberta's New Democrat government. All the government's MLAs were solidly behind its Climate Leadership Plan that is spending almost $2 billion a year, raised in new taxes, to fighting global warming on a provincial level. That plan contained next-to-no support for lowering CO2 emissions from oil and gas – the foundational cornerstones of the Alberta economy.



But Premier Rachel Notley's whole-hearted effort to get the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built — for the sake of jobs, new tax revenues and re-election in 2019 — sits uneasily with ND supporters who are more comfortable with a "no fossil fuels" environmental scenario.



The federal Liberal government is equally in knots about energy. On the one hand, government-approved environmental roadblocks have caused the pipeline industry to all but give up on new pipelines. On the other, it buys the Trans Mountain pipeline, insisting the Trans Mountain expansion must be built ... but may be deferred until after next year's federal election, in the hopes of keeping its 17 seats within the pervading  anti-pipeline sentiment of B.C.'s Lower Mainland.



On it goes.



First Nations are divided – those seeking jobs and economic development, versus those opposed to pipelines for environmental, territorial and political reasons.



Generations are divided – younger Canadians generally in favour of dramatic CO2 reduction without digesting the consequences to their employment future, their parents recognizing the importance of the Canadian carbon-based energy sector to our standard of living.



There is one great consequence of this national deadlock.



With so much opposition and risk, energy industry decision-makers are not investing in new or expanded Canadian energy projects; especially with the uncertainty of new pipelines to get the stuff to market.



The anti-pipeline crowd blithely suggest renewable energy manufacturing and construction can replace the economic activity generated by the oil patch.



How absurd: Three million barrels of oil are extracted, processed, refined and/or exported every day from Western Canada. Not one manufacturer of solar panels or wind farms has set up shop in this province.



Too much risk and over-regulation means needed pipelines are not being built. Industrial investment in Alberta is a shadow of what it once was.



All this, when Alberta's contribution to global warming is but a pimple on the elephant's back.

[Anonymous]

My husband's shop may leave  Western Canada and move to booming North Dakota because we don't want our own resource wealth anymore.

[Anonymous]

It's part of the reason why investment is fleeing Canada, Canadian families are feeling the pain of fuel poverty, exports suffer, good full time jobs are not being created and adding to our deficit woes.



From Sun News Media



Climate leadership is tearing Canada apart.



Geographical regions are divided, First Nations' groups are divided, governments are divided, political parties are divided, families are divided.



In the past, almost all Canadians supported the great national projects that created today's prosperity — the cross-Canada railroads, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the great hydro-electricity projects of B.C., Quebec, Manitoba and Newfoundland/Labrador.



Today, Canada's biggest potential prosperity-builder is construction of new or expanded pipelines and new ocean ports to export Western Canadian oil and natural gas to Eastern Canada, Asia, Europe and the USA.



But these pipelines have become the central battleground, the symbolic line in the sand, between those convinced too much CO2 (from the burning of fossil fuels) is causing world-destroying global warming, and the more moderate view that CO2 levels can be stabilized, then lowered, through a mix of renewable energy and the "greening" of carbon-based fuels through applied science.



I was back-packing with friends in the Rockies last weekend. Smoke from some 550 forest fires in B.C. enveloped the mountains in a ghostly dry mist.



Some in the group were convinced the forest fires were caused by global warming – that the B.C. forests are so dry (and thus burnable) due to climate change. Huge forest fires would be in the summer norm in British Columbia for the foreseeable future.



Others, more moderate, suggested the main culprit was not climate change, but better forest-fire suppression and the pine beetle.  Suppressing forest fires through early detection had led to a build-up of dry kindling on the forest floor. Meanwhile, the vast tree-killing pine-beetle infestation has led to millions of dry-as-a-bone dead trees. When the forest did catch fire – which is part of the forest cycle – it really caught on fire.



There seems to be no middle ground. These two views oppose each other, and they show up everywhere.



You can feel the uneasiness between the two camps within Alberta's New Democrat government. All the government's MLAs were solidly behind its Climate Leadership Plan that is spending almost $2 billion a year, raised in new taxes, to fighting global warming on a provincial level. That plan contained next-to-no support for lowering CO2 emissions from oil and gas – the foundational cornerstones of the Alberta economy.



But Premier Rachel Notley's whole-hearted effort to get the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion built — for the sake of jobs, new tax revenues and re-election in 2019 — sits uneasily with ND supporters who are more comfortable with a "no fossil fuels" environmental scenario.



The federal Liberal government is equally in knots about energy. On the one hand, government-approved environmental roadblocks have caused the pipeline industry to all but give up on new pipelines. On the other, it buys the Trans Mountain pipeline, insisting the Trans Mountain expansion must be built ... but may be deferred until after next year's federal election, in the hopes of keeping its 17 seats within the pervading  anti-pipeline sentiment of B.C.'s Lower Mainland.



On it goes.



First Nations are divided – those seeking jobs and economic development, versus those opposed to pipelines for environmental, territorial and political reasons.



Generations are divided – younger Canadians generally in favour of dramatic CO2 reduction without digesting the consequences to their employment future, their parents recognizing the importance of the Canadian carbon-based energy sector to our standard of living.



There is one great consequence of this national deadlock.



With so much opposition and risk, energy industry decision-makers are not investing in new or expanded Canadian energy projects; especially with the uncertainty of new pipelines to get the stuff to market.



The anti-pipeline crowd blithely suggest renewable energy manufacturing and construction can replace the economic activity generated by the oil patch.



How absurd: Three million barrels of oil are extracted, processed, refined and/or exported every day from Western Canada. Not one manufacturer of solar panels or wind farms has set up shop in this province.



Too much risk and over-regulation means needed pipelines are not being built. Industrial investment in Alberta is a shadow of what it once was.



All this, when Alberta's contribution to global warming is but a pimple on the elephant's back.

Nation building(or destroying) Trudeau style.

[Chuck Bronson]

Cut the fucking Indians off all welfare and any aid.  Do the same to white welfare bums that think they're Indian also. Don't give them a single penny.  THEN you'll see just how quick they change their tune, and how quick things will change...

[Anonymous]

Cut the fucking Indians off all welfare and any aid.  Do the same to white welfare bums that think they're Indian also. Don't give them a single penny.  THEN you'll see just how quick they change their tune, and how quick things will change...

What the fuck does any of this have to do with the Libs retarded poverty inducing climate change madness?

[Chuck Bronson]

What the fuck does any of this have to do with the Libs retarded poverty inducing climate change madness?

Did you even read the OP?

[Anonymous]

What the fuck does any of this have to do with the Libs retarded poverty inducing climate change madness?

Did you even read the OP?



Go fuck yourself you worthless gook.  Your contributions here have always equated to nothing more than watching paint dry.

Go fuck urself you short, effeminate, skinny no game little white homo. Stick one of those rifles in ur fucking face and pull the fucking trigger. Nobody will will miss ur white homo ass.

[Berry Sweet]

JT has no leadership.  The guy is in la la land.

[Anonymous]

JT has no leadership.  The guy is in la la land.

BULLSEYE!!

[Berry Sweet]

JT has no leadership.  The guy is in la la land.

BULLSEYE!!

It's true.



I dont know wtf he is thinking?  Good grief.  His pages that ask if he has canadians support?  The comments on there are atrocious!  People want him gone.

[Bricktop]

Do what we do.



If these idiots start imposing climate change madness on us, we kick them out.

[Chuck Bronson]

Go fuck urself you short, effeminate, skinny no game little white homo. Stick one of those rifles in ur fucking face and pull the fucking trigger. Nobody will will miss ur white homo ass.

Stay trashy...  it suits you.

[Berry Sweet]

Do what we do.



If these idiots start imposing climate change madness on us, we kick them out.

And then what?

[Anonymous]

Do what we do.



If these idiots start imposing climate change madness on us, we kick them out.

Our politicians seem pretty sure we will accept carbon tax confiscation without any consequences to themselves.

[Anonymous]

By Lorrie Goldstein



Mckenna misleading Canadians on carbon pricing



It's not helpful to a rational discussion about carbon pricing when federal Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine Mckenna misleads Canadians about what it is and what it does.



Responding to a tweet by Ontario's Financial Accountability Office (FAO) Tuesday that Premier Doug Ford's decision to cancel the cap-and-trade program of the previous Liberal government, "will worsen Ontario's budget balance by a total of $3 billion over the next four years," Mckenna tweeted: "Ontario's financial watchdog says Ford's decision to scrap a price on pollution will lead to $3 billion in lost revenue, making Ontario families worse off. This shouldn't be surprising. If you don't have a plan to fight climate change, you don't have a plan to grow the economy."



Except the FAO'S tweet said nothing about families being worse off.



It said, logically, that Ford's decision to scrap cap-andtrade means Ontario families and businesses will pay $3 billion less to the new PC government in Ontario over four years than would have been the case under the previous Liberal one.



[size=150]No form of carbon pricing, whether a carbon tax or cap-and-trade, which raises retail prices instead of the taxes on most goods and services, is a source of free money for governments, the public, or the economy.

[/size]

It's money paid by ordinary citizens to government, which then dispenses it as it sees fit, sometimes giving it to lower-income Canadians to help them cope with the increased cost of living carbon pricing brings, sometimes going to subsidize heavy industries which are the most intensive greenhouse gas emitters.



Contrary to Mckenna's claim, carbon pricing isn't good in and of itself.



Rather, it can be effective or ineffective in lowering industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change.



When, in 2016, Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk evaluated[size=150] the Ontario Liberal cap-and-trade scheme Ford scrapped, she described it as a poorly conceived plan which would not lower emissions effectively, nor come close to reducing them to the levels the government was claiming in the time frames it proposed.[/size]



She said the rules for the then-looming carbon market between Ontario, California and Quebec, and the money it would generate were so poorly defined that b[size=150]illions of dollars "may be leaving the Ontario economy for no purpose other than to help the government claim it has met a target."[/size]



Contrary to Mckenna's assertion, "if you don't have a plan to fight climate change, you don't have a plan to grow the economy", [size=150]Lysyk concluded the now-defunct Ontario Liberal government's climate change plan to rake in $8 billion over four years from the public through cap-and-trade would waste public money.[/size]



The ultimate irony of Mckenna's position is that the Trudeau government is now saying it will impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax on all provinces, including Ontario, that don't have their own carbon pricing plan, and then return all the money it raises to the public in the form of direct grants or income tax cuts.



That policy, called carbon fee and dividend, acknowledges that people are better equipped to spend their own money, rather than having governments do it for them, in making consumer choices to purchase low-carbon intensity goods.



This flies in the face of traditional Liberal philosophy that if you let people keep more of their own money instead of giving it to the government, they'll just blow it on beer and popcorn.