If you like to scroll through the news for comfort food, chow down on the coverage of the March 9 convention confirming Mark Carney as the new leader of the Liberal party of Canada – and prime minister in waiting.
Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, still spry and sharp at 91, delivered a convention speech celebrating his own legacy and that of the so-called “national governing party”. The Liberals, he noted, are the party which (six decades ago) brought us Medicare and the Canada Pension Plan, and more recently new social programs for dental care and childcare. Under his watch, from 1993 to 2003, the Grits also stood up to the White House, refusing to join the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
For red-blooded Liberals, listening to the old master spin a tangled web was soothing, as was hearing Carney’s acceptance speech, designed to show he had the right Liberal stuff and was primed and ready for the moment – a moment which demands a show-down with US President Donald Trump and his terrible tariffs. Carney, like Chretien, seemed to offer a promise that Canada could return to a comforting “old normal.”
But Trump, mercurial, unpredictable, friend to Russia but no friend to Canada, is part of “the new abnormal”, which we hope will go away once he does. But it won’t – abnormal is the flavor of the day, and probably of the decade.
Indeed, from our vantage point in the CrowsNest, we see a virtual armada of new abnormal warships steaming in our direction. To begin with, some kind of new world order, or disorder, will emerge from America’s belligerent trade policies, which are cojoined with its apparent disdain for the NATO alliance and the financial and monetary agencies created to bring stability to the world’s most prosperous economies in the wake of World War II.
It’s also clear we are entering a new world of environmental policy making. Inside Canada, climate change seems to be all but disappearing from political discourse, along with the federal carbon tax, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promoted, and Carney has scuppered. Carney’s speech also included a phrase that Trudeau would have gagged on, calling on Canada to transform itself into a “superpower in both clean and conventional energy.” Trudeau was no friend to the oil and gas industry; Carney may be.
And you don’t have to look far to find additional evidence of a sea change in the resources sector. In Nova Scotia, Premier Tim Houston has pledged to develop the province’s resource wealth and bypass protracted regulatory proceedings.
At an energy conference in Houston this week, officials from both the Alberta and federal governments were promoting the notion that Canada, as an energy “superpower”, can still be a reliable source of exports to the US.
On March 4, Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial Energy and Mines Ministers unanimously issued a statement vowing to “take decisive action to ensure Canadian companies remain competitive and succeed in the global market, including the acceleration of resource development through more efficient and timely permitting and regulatory processes.”
Frankly, this call to action is urgent and overdue. Canada’s regulatory system has become a muddy field where big resource projects sink to their final resting place. The CrowsNest does not advocate giving carte blanche approvals to new resource developments, but the regulatory system should be charged with issuing permits (or not) which considers hard evidence, not just public opinion.
It’s no accident that Canada’s economy has declined alongside the strength of its resource economy. Reviving that sector is in the national interest, inside a world where the US and the rest of the world covet Canadian assets – from precious metals to hydroelectric power to carbon fuels to fresh water. Demand for these resources are soaring, and will continue to do so, in the burgeoning new sectors – crypto currencies and AI – which consume massive quantities of energy.
In the new world disorder, Canada and its allies, and its enemies have to find a policy path to embrace growth while safeguarding the environment. So far, no federal political party has shown it has the right stuff in terms of tacking this challenge, but the solution certainly doesn’t involve offering up old bromides about Medicare, God, the King, or burning down the White House in 1814.
The arsonists, for the record, were British troops, not conscripts from pre-Confederation Canada.