We’re seen on five continents as we support responsible resource development.
Natural resource development in Canada provides more than 19% of our national economy, supports over 1.7 million jobs, and gives governments around $15 billion a year to pay for public services including health care and education.
It is important that such development be done responsibly, and with respect for the environment and climate. Our Power Struggle podcasts with Resource Works founder Stewart Muir acknowledge, emphasize, and preach that.
But we also point out this reality: Canada needs, and lives off, the billions we earn from resources, with 53% coming from energy resources and 28% from mineral resources. Then come the forestry and agriculture sectors. Without resources, the national economy goes belly-up.
Take energy, for example. Our very first Power Struggle episode spoke of the challenges of the “energy trilemma”: energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability.
“The uncomfortable truth is that our modern civilization is built on a foundation of fossil fuels.”
But we also noted: “Now the world's smartest people are hard at work, carving our way to a new clean energy. Future minds are finding ways of not only decreasing carbon use but actively removing carbon from the atmosphere, because to get to a true clean energy tomorrow, we can't just get to net zero. We have to get to negative carbon too.”
A challenge for the world, that. While we absolutely support the transition to cleaner energy, we noted in Episode 13: “So far the ‘transition” is not so much about moving away from traditional fuels as about adding renewable energy sources on top of them.”
And we added: “The world burns over one million tons of coal every hour. That’s the weight of nearly 5,000 Statues of Liberty or 10 aircraft carriers, or about 247,000 adult African elephants. . . . Clearly, without addressing coal's persistent use, the energy transition will fail.”
For Canada there’s another challenge: For a resource-rich country, our share of global trade is shrinking.
As Jock Finlayson, chief economist of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of BC told us on Power Struggle No. 2: “We are shrinking because others are rising or outperforming us and that trend, I think, is well established and it will persist. We're getting smaller, the world's getting bigger, but we're actually getting smaller, notwithstanding all the population growth we're having.”
He brought up a vital point that Power Struggle keeps pointing out to governments.
“We've gone too far in almost asphyxiating the private sector in regulatory burden and complexity and red tape, and certainly BC is a stalwart example of that.”
And: “The demand is there for all of these natural resource-based goods and also minerals and critical minerals, and metals and wood products and certainly food, all types of agri-food products. There's healthy, hearty demand for that and that's going to continue. It's going to keep growing. Why don't we aim to be the best in the world at producing this stuff?”
Adam Pankratz of UBC's Sauder School of Business also shook his head, in Episode 4, at government regulatory processes.
“We need to send a clear signal to the international investment community that Canada is a place where, if you want to mine or you want to extract resources, there's a clear pathway forward to make that happen right, and you can't have regulatory changes and uncertainty.
“Otherwise there's zero chance that anybody is going to come along with the tens — and it is tens at minimum — tens of billions of dollars required to get the mines and all these other projects to operational capacity.”
Power Struggle has also challenged the rationale and practicality of some government moves on climate change, such as federal and BC plans (even tighter than Ottawa’s) that require all new car, van, SUV, truck, and crossover sales to be electric by 2035.
Pankratz said it would require the power output of 10 dams like BC’s new Site C dam.
“So where are the dams going to come from? Or where's the electrical production going to come from to meet these electrical vehicle mandates? Where is the grid capacity going to come from? . . . Well, I have no idea, and neither does anyone else who wants to immediately electrify or immediately push this energy change onto an unsuspecting Canadian public. . . .
“What you're implying is trillions and trillions of dollars of taxpayer investment. . . . It’s hard, it's complicated and it's expensive, and I just wish people would be more upfront about how hard and expensive it will be.”
Barry Penner, former BC environment minister (who brought in North America's first broad-based tax on carbon emissions) now is chair of the Energy Futures Institute. He said on Episode 6 of our podcast:
“I support renewables where they make sense and reducing our emissions and improving efficiency whenever we can, but the reality is we in British Columbia are not going to meaningfully move the needle on global emissions because we're such a small player.
“We are already punching above our weight and we should continue to do so, but there needs to be a reckoning of what does this cost us. If we really were to ban the use of natural gas for home heating and mandate electric vehicles for everyone, what will this cost?
“Who's going to pay and what will the impacts be to society when we're not currently equipped to deliver the required electricity for those end uses?”
Margareta Dovgal, managing director of Resource Works, pushed on Power Struggle Episode 5 for some balance in such climate plans.
On the one hand: “There's a risk that you don't move quickly enough; that you say, ‘OK, just business as usual.’ and the problem just keeps getting worse and worse and worse.”
On the other hand, though: “You have governments who are coming in, responding to worsening, more frightful, more terrifying, news on climate change, and their solution is also really, really nonsensical, potentially damaging, and sets us back in a variety of critical ways.”
The above touches on just some of the key themes, issues, and comments in our first 13 Power Struggle episodes. There’s much more at https://powerstruggle.buzzsprout.com/
The series is a solid success. We have had visitors, viewers, and downloads across five continents, with strong engagement and audience comments. Power Struggle is here to stay.