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The Energy Future of Canada

Christy Clark, former BC premier, joins our Stewart Muir in this election-special Power Struggle podcast. She says Canada needs to create “new wealth,” and she looks at ways to make that happen, especially through natural resources.

NEW WEALTH 

Clark says our next prime minister must, after 10 years of stalled growth, have clear goals that will help Canada to become an economic power again and create new wealth and more jobs. 

For example, Canada needs to figure out how to make semiconductors and high-tech products so we can supply our allies and create a bulwark against autocratic regimes around the world. The same applies to critical minerals and clean energy.

“Think how Canada could supply the world and how important we could suddenly become again, and the role that we could play if we decided to get to yes on some of those resource projects.”

For one thing, Canada needs to reform its regulatory processes on natural-resource projects so investors know how they can ‘get to yes.’ 

Among other things, that means having a firm timeline for the processes. Federal and provincial processes need to be harmonized. There should be certainty about treatment and taxation. And the regulatory civil servants need to be accountable for meeting deadlines and getting the processes done.

So, she says, the next prime minister has got “one hell of a task ahead of them in trying to change the regulatory environment so that we can attract investment and juice up the economy.”

LNG and CLIMATE

Clark’s government (2011-2017) was approached by developers who had 18 LNG projects in mind for BC. 

But in Ottawa, she ran into government representatives “who didn’t even know what LNG was.”  Then, Ottawa and the following BC government spent a decade “trying to kill every single one of those projects.”  

She says the LNG Canada project in BC was far enough along that it couldn’t be cancelled, but it’s far below its potential output capacity, and “we could be hosting three huge plants” now, not just the one.

But at least when LNG Canada starts up, soon after the federal election, we’ll be able to see and measure its contribution to the economy.”

As for tackling climate change, LNG in particular is “a huge, huge benefit for the climate change agenda,” by displacing coal burned to produce power in Asia.

So, she says, government needs to figure out how to bring about sustainable development of our resource sector and then start thinking about the climate problem as a problem for the world. We need to help China not build coal-fired factories — by getting them our LNG.

Another point she made on climate: Canada is not meeting its net-zero goals, despite paying carbon taxes. We set out be “the boy scouts and girl scouts of climate leadership (but) that’s not what has happened.”

She noted that some countries have a much bigger climate impact than does Canada. “We need to be doing what we can to supply those countries with all of the clean energy that we can and all those clean-energy sources and clean-energy technology to try and reduce their emissions. . . . That really should be the priority for the next government.”

INDIGENOUS RECONCILIATION 

Clark said that as premier, she started to visit First Nations communities, and in many found a shockingly low standard of living and poverty, driven by the history of colonization, residential schools, and taking away Indigenous land.

Now, she says, we must allow First Nations to have their land-rights back, to create wealth in their own communities, to be owners and workers, and to develop their own communities with money that they’ve created, so that they can choose their own futures.

“I think it’s pretty fundamental for us, if we want to reconcile, to say, ‘OK, look, you’re going to have rights back to your land and we’re going to help you. We’re going to support you and partner with you in developing resources and wealth from that land that has traditionally been yours.’”

And we must give Indigenous peoples the opportunity to develop resources, and use the benefits to improve the infrastructure of their communities, “so that their kids can be just as healthy as ours.”

THE NEXT ELECTION

The former premier says candidates need to grasp that the election isn’t about talking points. 

“This is about the future of the country and whether or not we are going to remain a wealthy country or whether or not we’re going to continue to slip.”

We need that wealth, she adds, to be able to pay for health care, education, and the other things that make our country great.

And she continues: “We are not producing jobs and resources and wealth in Canada that we should be, and until we start creating that wealth, we can’t create a better future for our kids. . . .  That’s why this is such an important election. . . .

“If everybody was trying to talk about how we’re going to make it better — rather than just about how everybody else was going to make it worse — we would have a better political debate in the country. But that’s not what’s happening now.”

Stewart Muir asked her to give a single piece of advice for the next prime minister.

Her answer included this: 

“We are really at a pivotal moment that people are going to look back to in history, like a Churchillian moment. Our next prime minister, I hope, will fill those shoes and decide to say ‘I’m going to be big and I’m going to be brave and I’m going to look this problem in the face and I’m going to try and do what’s right for the country, not what’s right for me and not what’s right for my party.’”

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