Business insider says billions could leave Canada due to Guilbeault

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The Trudeau Liberals’ announcement of a new emissions cap on the oil and gas sector might be the last, grandiose gasp and the final prosperity-pulverizing policy put forward by Steven Guilbeault and the Trudeau Liberals. But it still acted as a major trigger.

In Edmonton, Alberta Premier Smith declared she was “pissed” about the move and claimed Guilbeault had a “deranged vendetta against Alberta,” with the cap causing a one million barrel per day reduction in oil production by 2030, with an additional one million barrel per day cut by 2035.

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In Toronto, oil and gas financier Eric Nuttall said in a country already in economic trouble, with the Gross Domestic Product flat and productivity growth the lowest in the G7, this new de facto production cap on such a major industry as Canadian oil and gas amounts to “economic treason.”

“We zealously attack a sector that makes up only 0.1 per cent of global emissions when one year of Chinese coal plant growth would completely wipe out our efforts. For what gain then? With non-OPEC production expected to peak in 2027 and Canada’s high environmental standing, we are part of the global ‘solution,’ not the ‘problem.’ To willingly cede market share to others, many of whom do not respect the environment, is purposeless, self-inflicted economic repression.”

To get some context on the schemes of Guilbeault and the Trudeau Liberals, I went to Calgary investment expert Martin Pelletier, an ardent Canadian nationalist and measured economic commentator.

“I’m telling you the stuff I’m seeing scares the sh-t out of me,” Pelletier said of Liberal policy. “Like the attack on small business, the capital gains changes, and the emissions cap, and it just keeps going on and on.”

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Pelletier’s company manages money for wealthy Canadian families in all kinds of businesses. Some of his clients are now considering leaving the country, Pelletier said. “They can give up their residency and move to a jurisdiction that is going to be more favourable for them. If they’re feeling very frustrated and they’re not going to deploy capital to the economy, how are we going to grow?”

But Pelletier’s clients also see Canadians will likely elect a Conservative government far more friendly to economic investment. They’re open to staying and seeing if Leader Pierre Poilievre can fix things, but not otherwise.

“If Trudeau gets another term, there will be billions of capital leaving the country.”

As for the motivations behind Liberal policy, Pelletier sees Guilbeault as the radical Greenpeace activist he always was. “His binary, black and white, dualistic approach is not going to solve the problem (of climate change). It’s just going to destroy the country, and somebody else is going to take that market share. It could be Iran.”

I asked Pelletier about Nuttall’s notion of the cap amounting to “economic treason.”

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“I mean, I wouldn’t use that word,” he said. “I would probably ask, is it nuclear to the economy? Is it going to cause catastrophic damage? The numbers are saying, yeah, it’s not good.”

Strong and sober words.

In the end, however, the most damning comment about the cap came unwittingly from Guilbeault himself. Asked if the draft legislation would ever see the light of day given the Liberals’ iffy grip on power, Guilbeault boasted about how radical these measures are. “Look around the world,” he said. “No other major oil and gas producer is doing what we’re doing, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, the Gulf States. We are the only large oil and gas producer in the world to do this.”

The messianic Guilbeault yearns to lead the world in emissions reductions,  but it’s an area few other countries evidently treat as a major crisis, from China and India doing all they can to gobble up coal, oil and gas, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro and every other energy source they can acquire to the United States, now going whole hog on nuclear power and having rejected its own federal carbon tax.

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Do you think the likes of Guilbeault and Trudeau are the wise ones here? Or do the cold and calculating leaders of China, India, and the United States (whoever takes power there) better grasp the realities of national economic security and prosperity?

This is the same Guilbeault, after all, who has zero credibility on his cherished climate issue. He destroyed his reputation with his fierce life-long opposition to nuclear power, the single best clean energy source to both cut emissions and build national prosperity. So long as he’s in power, the terrible ideas and triggered reactions will keep coming. Fortunately, the days of the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa are dwindling fast.

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