"13 Billion Reasons Albertans Should Be Livid"
May 6th 2023
Thirteen billion dollars in government subsidies are going to Volkswagen to build an electric vehicle battery plant in Ontario. That’s what the Liberal government calls a “business case.” Thirteen billion dollars to build a $7-billion factory. Of course such a massive payout — bribe? — would only be provided for a “green” business case.
Foreign governments caught in an energy squeeze — like say, Germany — turned to Canada to see if our great oil and gas reserves might fill the gap, but that was not a business case, according to our prime minister. At least not a business case for Canada. For Qatar maybe, but not Canada.
It is the first law of industrial and business policy in Canada that any project, any solicitation from foreign governments to take advantage of our present-day energy resources, cannot constitute a “business case.” For such is not green.
A hydrogen plant in Newfoundland. A business case. Same for an electric vehicle battery factory to be built by a foreign corporation, massively injected with Canadian tax dollars — that’s a business case.
Aaron Wudrick of the MacDonald-Laurier Institute gave what I see as an accurate description of this transaction, when he wrote in the Post recently that it constitutes “a single deal more than triple the amount bilked out of public coffers by Bombardier, the poster-child of Canadian corporate welfare, over a half-century span.”
I also think he’s absolutely on target when he says a deal like this one illustrates the strange “religious-like groupthink that seems to have infected politicians of all stripes about the need for Canada to be a ‘player’ in the green economy.” Religious-like groupthink is the explanation for all these Liberal policies, from carbon taxes to carbon offsets (which are being seriously reviewed as to their effectiveness — if they are effective at all) to barring the construction of pipelines to banning plastic straws.
Only an obsession with so-called net-zero and the absolutely ferocious determination of the Liberal government to first wound the Canadian oil and gas industry, then to shut it down altogether — that’s the ultimate goal of the tendentiously named “just transition” — can explain why $13 billion can be thrown at what is at best a “future” market to a foreign corporate giant. It’s green, you see, and that is always, always an iron-clad, absolutely-cannot-go-wrong (the government guarantees it) business case.
Now while this great new industrial initiative is centred in Ontario it will have, shall we say, repercussions outside that province. The grand largesse and favouritism shown by this deal to Ontario will almost certainly provide fodder for the upcoming provincial election in Alberta.
The election will be, in effect, a referendum on whether Ottawa’s fixation on climate policies represents a direct interference in the economy of an entire province. Alberta has been landlocked, all pipeline projects halted or put off the agenda completely, and portrayed as the villain province in the combat against global warming.
It could, in its way, be the most significant provincial election — significant in terms of the Confederation itself — that we have seen in a long, long while. A deal like this massive $13-billion subsidy to vote-rich Ontario is not likely to be viewed with celebration in Alberta. It may, and I think should be, viewed as evidence that the green-inspired federal governance is definitively hostile to “outlying” provinces.
Voters in Alberta might be asking why an east-west pipeline (a very worthy project) or more West Coast ports to export Alberta oil and gas are not business cases, while fork-lifting billions to Volkswagen is. Why jobs from proven resources in Alberta are damned by the Liberal government, while jobs from a putative, future EV factory gets hallelujahs.
It’s a two-tier Confederation. The Alberta election should turn on Ottawa’s radical determination to shut down oil and gas under the cowardly euphemism of a “just transition.”
The election will provide an indication of just how long Alberta is willing to accept what amounts to economic discrimination by Ottawa without taking some radical measures to halt it. For it — the discrimination — cannot so blatantly continue without some substantial response from Albertans.
Credits to National Post, Rex Murphy
nationalpost.com
Foreign governments caught in an energy squeeze — like say, Germany — turned to Canada to see if our great oil and gas reserves might fill the gap, but that was not a business case, according to our prime minister. At least not a business case for Canada. For Qatar maybe, but not Canada.
It is the first law of industrial and business policy in Canada that any project, any solicitation from foreign governments to take advantage of our present-day energy resources, cannot constitute a “business case.” For such is not green.
A hydrogen plant in Newfoundland. A business case. Same for an electric vehicle battery factory to be built by a foreign corporation, massively injected with Canadian tax dollars — that’s a business case.
Aaron Wudrick of the MacDonald-Laurier Institute gave what I see as an accurate description of this transaction, when he wrote in the Post recently that it constitutes “a single deal more than triple the amount bilked out of public coffers by Bombardier, the poster-child of Canadian corporate welfare, over a half-century span.”
I also think he’s absolutely on target when he says a deal like this one illustrates the strange “religious-like groupthink that seems to have infected politicians of all stripes about the need for Canada to be a ‘player’ in the green economy.” Religious-like groupthink is the explanation for all these Liberal policies, from carbon taxes to carbon offsets (which are being seriously reviewed as to their effectiveness — if they are effective at all) to barring the construction of pipelines to banning plastic straws.
Only an obsession with so-called net-zero and the absolutely ferocious determination of the Liberal government to first wound the Canadian oil and gas industry, then to shut it down altogether — that’s the ultimate goal of the tendentiously named “just transition” — can explain why $13 billion can be thrown at what is at best a “future” market to a foreign corporate giant. It’s green, you see, and that is always, always an iron-clad, absolutely-cannot-go-wrong (the government guarantees it) business case.
Now while this great new industrial initiative is centred in Ontario it will have, shall we say, repercussions outside that province. The grand largesse and favouritism shown by this deal to Ontario will almost certainly provide fodder for the upcoming provincial election in Alberta.
The election will be, in effect, a referendum on whether Ottawa’s fixation on climate policies represents a direct interference in the economy of an entire province. Alberta has been landlocked, all pipeline projects halted or put off the agenda completely, and portrayed as the villain province in the combat against global warming.
It could, in its way, be the most significant provincial election — significant in terms of the Confederation itself — that we have seen in a long, long while. A deal like this massive $13-billion subsidy to vote-rich Ontario is not likely to be viewed with celebration in Alberta. It may, and I think should be, viewed as evidence that the green-inspired federal governance is definitively hostile to “outlying” provinces.
Voters in Alberta might be asking why an east-west pipeline (a very worthy project) or more West Coast ports to export Alberta oil and gas are not business cases, while fork-lifting billions to Volkswagen is. Why jobs from proven resources in Alberta are damned by the Liberal government, while jobs from a putative, future EV factory gets hallelujahs.
It’s a two-tier Confederation. The Alberta election should turn on Ottawa’s radical determination to shut down oil and gas under the cowardly euphemism of a “just transition.”
The election will provide an indication of just how long Alberta is willing to accept what amounts to economic discrimination by Ottawa without taking some radical measures to halt it. For it — the discrimination — cannot so blatantly continue without some substantial response from Albertans.
Credits to National Post, Rex Murphy
nationalpost.com
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