R.I.P to the great Charlie Kirk! ~ R.I.P to our friend Caskur!
QuoteLiberal climate policies damaged our economyhttps://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-liberal-climate-policies-damaged-our-economy
Justin Trudeau's policies amounted to Canada cutting its own economic throat, given the importance of the oil and gas sector to our economy
Prime Minister Mark Carney acknowledged in a year-end interview with CBC that former prime minister Justin Trudeau's climate change plan was a $200-billion flop, the roots of that failure predate Trudeau.
They go back to then-prime minister Jean Chretien signing onto the United Nations Kyoto accord in 1998, committing Canada to economy-killing climate targets which – as top Chretien aide Eddie Goldenberg later acknowledged – the Liberals knew they couldn't achieve.
Even the U.S. at the time – with Bill Clinton as president and global warming guru Al Gore as vice president – never ratified the accord after the U.S. Senate, in a 95-0 bipartisan vote, said it would reject the treaty because it made no demands of China and other developing nations to lower their industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
Canada should have done the same, because while the leading advocate of the accord was the European Union and it was designed to hobble the U.S. economy, its implications for Canada – a big, cold, northern country with a relatively small population and a natural-resourced based economy – were even worse.
The problem was that by enacting the UN climate accord and its unachievable target of cutting Canada's emissions to an average of 6% below 1990 levels from 2008 to 2012, the Liberals committed to a UN process that culminated with the 2015 Paris climate agreement and Trudeau promising to reduce Canada's emissions to at least 40% below 2005 levels by 2030, on the way to net zero by 2050.
Trudeau's policies designed to implement that target – while failing to do so – amounted to Canada cutting its own economic throat, given the importance of the oil and gas sector to our economy.
Carney's measures since becoming prime minister – from cancelling the consumer carbon tax and the oil and gas emissions cap, to suspending Canada's EV mandates and signing a memorandum of understanding with Alberta Premier Danielle Smith for a pipeline extending from the oil sands to tidewater in northern B.C. – are all direct repudiations of Trudeau's climate policies.
What remains to be seen is whether Carney's policies – as the leading global corporate spokesman for net zero policies and higher carbon taxes prior to becoming prime minister – will grow the Canadian economy or further damage it.

QuoteCanada entered the 2020s with an energy strategy grounded not in engineering or economics but in climate narratives and regulatory zeal. Carbon taxes and pipeline constraints raised the cost of fuel not through scarcity but through deliberate policy choices. A modern economy cannot escape the mathematics of input costs. When energy policy forces fuel prices upward, every other price follows. Inflation rose even before global shocks arrived. Deficit spending surged during the pandemic. The Bank of Canada resumed large-scale purchases of government bonds but not as part of a national development strategy. Instead, it was a crisis reflex that underwrote consumption rather than investment. When inflation accelerated, the Bank again raised interest rates, repeating the dynamic of the early 1980s but without the industrial strength Canada once possessed.
Investors responded rationally. Capital left for jurisdictions with stable regulatory frameworks and predictable policy paths. Domestic firms hesitated to expand. Foreign companies scaled back operations or withdrew entirely. Productivity declined because investment collapsed. Meanwhile, the welfare state grew costlier because demographic pressures mounted while the tax base stagnated. The consequence was not ideological. It was arithmetic. A country that undermines its productive sectors while expanding its dependent sectors will run deficits, accumulate debt, and lose competitiveness.
This brings us back to the question that opened this essay. Canada's economic deterioration was not mysterious. It was the long-term consequence of abandoning sovereign credit, embracing a regulatory culture that treated markets as subordinate to ideology, and filling the machinery of government with people who lacked the knowledge and humility required to manage complex systems. When merit declines, confidence often rises. This is the Dunning–Kruger effect in national form. Leaders who know least believe they know most. Leaders who know most understand the limits of their knowledge and tread carefully.
Canada once understood those limits. It built railways and ports when private capital could not. It used the Bank of Canada to finance growth efficiently. It kept regulation within the bounds of practicality. It relied on people with real experience to run portfolios that required expertise. In later decades, it did the opposite. It regulated at every turn, spent without discipline, taxed energy out of ideological conviction, and placed heavy responsibilities in the hands of those who did not understand their own tools.
The outcome is the economy Canadians now face. Investment has fled. Productivity has fallen. The cost of living is rising. Debt is growing. The welfare state has expanded faster than national income. None of this was inevitable. It is the product of choices, institutions, and leaders. Canada can recover what it lost, but not until it recovers the one thing that sustained its greatest successes: a governing class chosen for competence rather than conformity.



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