Spencer Fernando
-Published:June 28, 2021
-Spencer Fernando News&Commentary
Catherine’s Crusade against Canada’s energy sector was a stunningly naïve, divisive, and economically destructive agenda that must have foreign countries like Saudi Arabia, Russia, and more laughing at us.
With Catherine McKenna announcing her retirement from politics, it’s important to take some time to consider her legacy as a federal minister.
Of course, many will be saying nice things about her on a personal level, and there’s no reason to believe those things are untrue.
By all accounts she seems like a nice human being, though of course you never really know.
But that’s not what we’re talking about here. Rather, this is about the results of the policies and worldview she pushed, particularly in her time as environment minister.
Naïve
Catherine McKenna was one of the most divisive federal cabinet ministers in a long-time.
Her supporters claim this is because of ‘sexism,’ which of course raises the question of why other female ministers aren’t nearly as divisive as McKenna was.
Cries of ‘sexism’ and ‘racism’ are often used as a shield to demonize those who criticize a public official who is incompetent or who damages the country. So, we aren’t going to play that politically-correct game.
McKenna wasn’t divisive because she is a woman, she was divisive because she exhibited a naïve attitude, and because that naïve attitude did real material harm to this nation.
Like many naïve individuals, McKenna tended to see Canada – and by extension our Western allies – as the problem, and imposed (at Justin Trudeau’s behest of course) policies that would damage the economies of Canada and our allies while leaving most other countries either unscathed, or indeed benefitting from our losses.
Consider the Paris Climate Accord, which put restrictive targets on Canada, the US, and most Western Nations, while giving China, India, and many other countries more than a decade of emissions growth.
The practical, real-world effect of that would be that China would grow wealthier in proportion to the US and Canada. A wealthier China can afford a larger military, a larger military gives China more power to coerce other nations and impose their ruthless Communist system.
Some may dismiss this, but leaders must realize that everything is linked. You can’t make a change one area without that impacting other areas.
So, the more China gets a free pass on emissions while Canada, the US, and our other allies are held back, the more hostile the world becomes to freedom and democracy.
That’s the problem with naïve ‘feel-good’ thinking: It usually is totally incompatible with how the world really works.
Enriching foreign nations
The energy market doesn’t really care who supplies the needs of customers, so long as those needs are supplied.
Thus, every dollar Canada loses in energy sales because of the carbon tax, cancellation of pipelines, and projects that never even got under way because of McKenna’s anti-Canadian energy policies, will be a dollar that goes to a foreign country.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Nigeria, and more are all glad to pick up the slack.
What this means, in the brutal practical reality of life, is that there are schools in Saudi Arabia that were built with money that should have been building a school in Canada, there were roads paved in Russia that should have been paved in Canada, and there were weapons bought in Iran that could have been been bought for Canada’s moribund Armed Forces.
McKenna and Trudeau didn’t do anything to shrink the global energy market, they simply ensured that Canadians would have a smaller slice of it, making foreign countries wealthier at our expense.
Making emissions worse
Here’s where McKenna’s naïve approach really gets absurd:
Even by her own supposed goals, her policies backfired.
Given that demand for oil, natural gas, and coal remains high in many parts of the world, and will remain so due to rising energy needs in many growing countries, the best way to assure environmental protection while meeting those needs is for the energy supply to come from countries with strong environmental and labour protections.
Canada – and Alberta in particular – are world leaders in that regard.
So the more that energy demand is filled by Canada, the better off the world will be in terms of emissions. This is something the Conservatives got 100% right in their energy policy under Andrew Scheer, and they should have stuck with it, rather than their shameful surrender to the Carbon Tax Cult.
So, given that more Canadian energy is good for the planet, What did Catherine McKenna’s policy accomplish?
THE EXACT OPPOSITE.
Catherine’s Crusade ‘for the planet’ was actually a crusade against the Canadian Energy Industry, which ironically means McKenna was indirectly doing the bidding of the oil and gas industries/state-owned energy companies in countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Looking at all of this, foreign dictatorships must be laughing at Canada, and with good reason.
McKenna’s policies had the practical effect of making Canadians poorer, driving away jobs and opportunities, and pushing those jobs opportunities and wealth into foreign countries all while worsening emissions.
Great job!
Dividing the country
Western Alienation is surging, in large part due to how Justin Trudeau and Catherine McKenna govern and put their boot on the neck of the Western Canadian Energy Sector.
People in Western Canada can see the hypocrisy, see the naivety, and feel the damage of McKenna’s policies.
In Western Canada, People are well aware that tremendous opportunities have been lost, and people have watched those opportunities go not only to countries overseas, but right over the border to our good friends down south. Watching jobs and wealth flee to the United States has only reinforced how damaging McKenna/Trudeau’s policies have been.
Literally, the only things McKenna ‘accomplished’ was to hurt Canadians, further divide our country, and make foreign countries richer.
And as we know, those ‘accomplishments’ are really failures, failures that our country is still dealing with at this very moment, and which threaten the economic future of our nation and put our national unity in peril.
That’s Catherine McKenna’s legacy in federal politics