Articles
Articles
Imagining the future of Canada's oil and gas industry
Building backward, not building back better, is the risk of shunning innovation in the four-fifths of global energy that comes from fossil fuels.
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Rewriting the rules for radicals
Fresh hope for a pandemic playbook for 2021 that will help guide the Canadian energy sector out of today’s doubt and uncertainty.
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Task Force delivers solutions for the future of natural resources in Canada
The Real Jobs, Real Recovery is a national project drawing on the input of organizations representing more than 3 million Canadian workers.
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Recovery strategy: "Focus on the leading economic engines"
It turns out that industries producing the materials at the centre of modern life can be a driving force for economic recovery after the pandemic. Stewart Muir looks at how the new Stronger Tomorrow strategy looks to leverage, and evolve, longstanding job and GDP pillars in the natural resource sector.
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How natural resources can relaunch the Canadian economy
In the COVID-19 recovery phase, natural resources are well-positioned to step in to assume their traditional leadership role in creating wealth and jobs for Canadians, writes economist Philip Cross.
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Old growth, new beginning
The province of British Columbia’s Old Growth Strategic Review tackles head-on an issue that has bedevilled the government for decades: ensuring that the seemingly polarizing values of forest protection and public prosperity can somehow be harmonized. Stewart Muir looks at the issue.
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What are the rules for Net Zero?
Strategic assessment of climate change says new Canadian mines, power plants, pipelines and railways will be covered, but lacks details on how changes to them – and the global energy system – will be measured or enforced.
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Real Jobs, Real Recovery: A Task Force for Canada
This month and next, Resource Works is supporting a national effort to recommend the best path forward out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here's the latest on our work.
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What’s required for Canadian economy to recover from the pandemic?
The one-word answer is: Jobs. Jobs of all kinds, but most of all we need to see the kind of high-paying, long-lasting jobs typically associated with investments in economic growth potential, writes Stewart Muir.
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The Green Recovery – and some inconvenient truths
Wishful thinking and empty promises aren’t helping with the needed energy transition. It’s time to turn our minds and our will to the hard work of transformation by mid century based on the realities of our society and our economy, writes Mike Cleland.
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Energy transition: Canada’s policy?
The last crystal ball we had was a kid’s marble from a Christmas cracker. So we’re not about to make our own predictions about the fate of oil. We’ll ignore Green MP Elizabeth May’s silly claim that “oil is dead,” and will look instead at what professional predictors are seeing in their digital crystal balls.
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Legislators get a briefing on the state of the natural resource sector
Resource Works looks at presentations made by forestry, mining, energy and ranching representatives to British Columbia MLAs.
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Some realistic solutions for the future of energy
Eager to move off the full-throttled despair and chastising that boils over in the clash of ideas about energy? Offering insights and practicality while many of us are still cooped up at home, Stewart Muir talks about realistic solutions to the problems we're facing.
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REALITY CHECK: Guess who's got the most to lose from rash decisions on economic recovery?
We’re at a moment of economic stress, with competing visions for how Canadian society should return to normalcy through the pandemic crisis. Stewart Muir looks at the situation.
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Coming up: BC’s cleanest LNG
Look out. Look ’way out. And stop looking at today’s depressed spot prices in a rocky world market that’s too full of surplus LNG. Look instead to, say, 2024-2025 - which is where the investors in Woodfibre LNG and LNG Canada are looking.
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Fighting fear and uncertainty in the economic recovery
The coronavirus pandemic represents the largest disruption of BC’s labour market in our history. Uncertainty and fear among many businesses, workers, customers and the general public about the continuing pandemic affects how we grasp the new normal and move beyond the crisis. Human resources expert Kerry Jothen weighs in.
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Green pressure on Canada escalating, rapidly
So supporters of a big shift to "green" are putting heat on our federal government to turn Canada into a shiny world leader for renewable energy, now that “oil is dead.” They promote it to Ottawa as a part of the new normal they want to follow the COVID-19 pandemic. But does this logic make sense?
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Questions abound in fate of Wet'suwet'en governance
Non-Indigenous elected officials are staying quiet about a title deal made with a small group of unelected hereditary chiefs, despite calls for transparency from elected Wet'suwet'en chiefs. What's really going on in this challenging situation? Stewart Muir, who travelled widely in the affected areas earlier this year, weighs the facts so far.
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Four things that District of Squamish councillors are getting wrong about Woodfibre LNG
Pushed by anti-LNG pressure groups, District of Squamish councillors have decided to offer their own response to emissions reduction guidelines set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), urging the BC Environmental Assessment Office to refuse a five-year environmental certificate extension for the $1.6 billion Woodfibre LNG project. The councillors supporting this motion are getting a couple of things very wrong.
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