Carney's Energy Gamble: Champagne Pipe Dreams And Caviar Deception
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.-- Leo Tolstoy
You can fool some of the people all of the time, but occasionally you can fool all the people all the time. Just ask Mark Carney. Especially when it’s the Elbows Up rubes. Carney has used the time-honoured climate catastrophe gig to grab hold of Canada’s cow fart fortunes. Even though The United Nations’ climate change committee has quietly discarded the dire temperature-rise scenarios in its latest two reports Carney is going full bore with the carbon tax alarmism.
The latest pipeline hustle is a great example. There are two ways to look at the recent MOU between Carney’s climate crusaders and Danielle Smith’s pump-till-you-dump squad. On the surface, Carney’s promise to build a pipeline to tidewater at some future date repudiates everything the Liberals have stood for since Justin Trudeau pulled down the shades on Canada’s economy.
Meanwhile, Smith’s acquiescence to a rise in the Carbon Tax in exchange for the possibility of a pipeline similarly appears to contradict her party’s stance on energy. Nowhere else globally do they believe this tax will equal clear skies. They’re pursuing a cheap Boy Scout badge in the midst of an independence referendum. What’s going on here?
But looked at another way, Carney gets a big Alberta ‘win’. Alberta pays the carbon tax for ten years and pretends to build a pipeline later. As Wimpy said, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”. He knows it’s a crock. Government-to-government MOUs won’t create a pipeline without investors and builders at the table. Growing the carbon tax six times with Bills C-48 & C-69 still in place means investors will walk away from Canada.
And the Tamil sympathizer in the cabinet, Gary Anandasangaree, will then criminalize any Bad Think that arises from this deception. From Smith’s perspective this MOU may sting for a while, but when the deception is finally revealed it may be the straw that breaks Alberta’s back for good. Independence support will soar. First Nations will decide to look for a better deal with someone else. The Americans pick up the pieces of a fractured Canada.
See how that works from a different perspective? As Chekov wrote, "The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly."
Since his adoption of Europe’s globalist cult Carney knows he has an open field to hand North America to the Davos crowd. He may be reviled in Canada’s West but what does he care? Facts don’t matter when you have momentum.
Here’s another way to look at the Carbon capture rapture. For those not following along, Carney as PM was a product of POTUS Donald Trump telling Canada that it was bringing six beers to the party but drinking nine. He insinuated that Trudeau’s legacy is infiltration by China and India. And money laundering by the fentanyl crowd. if iCanada doesn’t pull its weight on defence there will be some hefty tariffs imposed.
In short order Liberals caught with their pants down orchestrated a quick switch-out of Mr. Katy Perry for Scrooge McDuck. To hide their tracks they launched Canadian comic Mike Myers into the debate under the guise of Elbows Up— a fractured tribute to hockey tough guy Gordie Howe. Canadian patriots went mad for the idea.
(Note: The Myers comedic coup copied a similar stunt in Ukraine where comedian Vlad Zelenskyy graduated from comic to president of a war-torn nation. )
To hide his tracks the man named the Inconvenient Boyfriend for his stint as governor of the Bank of England, quickly struck into a flurry of photo ops, proclamations, declarations and deceptions to emphasize his seriousness. He told Canadians they didn’t need America as a market anymore. With China they became the only two nations to introduce countervailing tariffs on the U,S.
To placate Trump’s NATO demands for two percent of GDP to defence spending the Liberals simply moved spending from other departments into Defence. This leger de main was a smashing success everywhere but with Albertans who suggested an economic war with the world's largest market might not work out so well. Hence the referendum. The purchased media declared this to be treasonous and condemned anyone who said otherwise. As George Orwell recognized, “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot."
Unchastened, Carney turned on the spigots of Canada’s Middle Power virtue, using the public pensions to backstop otherwise sceptical foreign investors. In a typical show of largesse he sent $4B to Ukraine at the exact moment his old firm Brookfield landed a $4B construction contract in Ukraine. Slick, huh?
Faced with Carney’s utter indifference to Canada’s continental defence— and his impertinent romance with China— Trump temporarily halted involvement in the Permanent Joint Board on Defence while reviewing the forum’s relevance. Dating back to World War II, the body has for decades acted as a crucial channel for bilateral cooperation on continental defence and strategic planning. “A strong Canada that prioritizes hard power over rhetoric benefits us all. Unfortunately, Canada has failed to make credible progress on its defense commitments,” wrote US Undersecretary of Defence Elbridge Colby.
While some said it was no big whoop, the message from America said otherwise. Don’t mess wit the man. This comes after earlier moves to cut Canada out of the loop on the Five Eyes Intelligence organization for leaking info to enemies. It’s hard not to see Canada drifting along in space.
To sum up, Carney’s advertising a pipeline that won’t be built, skies that won’t be cleaner and defence spending on a military that can’t fight. To paraphrase Orwell, "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his 2023 book Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, was voted a Top 20 greatest professional hockey books of all time by bookauthority.org . https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1770415300?linkCode=gs2&tag=uuid0a1-20 His previous book with his son Evan, Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/106980270
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. George Orwell
You will not become a saint through other people's sins.