If people really want life to be more affordable, they will need to vote for politicians who support the growth of Canada’s energy sector.
Survey after survey shows a vast majority of Canadians feeling the pain of surging prices and the stagnant economy.
Most people already feel Canada is in a recession, and it is becoming tougher and tougher for people to make ends meet.
And yet, the Liberals only trail by around 5 points in most polls, and the combined Liberal-NDP vote is still higher than the Conservative vote by a significant margin.
So, why is this the case?
Connect the dots
A key reason is that many issues in our country are seen in isolation, when they are in fact deeply connected.
For example, many Canadians voted for politicians who promised to take ‘climate action’ and who opposed expanding the oil & gas industry.
Those politicians also supported the carbon tax.
Many Canadians who voted for those politicians also wanted Canada’s leaders to make life more affordable.
The problem is that those things are incompatible.
You can’t impose a carbon tax that raises the cost of everything, oppose multi-billion dollar energy sector projects, and seek to hold back the supply of affordable energy, and then claim you want to make life less expensive.
Unfortunately, many Canadians look at this issues as completely separate.
They will be happy when they hear politicians like Justin Trudeau or Jagmeet Singh talking about a so-called “just transition”.
They’ll be happy when they hear those politicians say the carbon tax is helping to “save the planet.”
They’ll be glad to hear that ‘dirty energy’ projects aren’t going ahead and the government is instead focused on ‘green energy’ and “decarbonization.”
And then they’ll go to the story and be outraged that everything is so expensive.
Feelings over reality
For a long time, Canada has been lucky.
Our country has abundant land and resources.
We are allies with the world’s dominant economic and military power.
The world was relatively peaceful for a long-time, and the biggest sources of conflict were terrorist organizations that – while posing a significant threat in terms of individual attacks – could not directly threaten the existence of nation states or national alliances.
In short, simply by sitting back and doing almost nothing Canada’s leaders could ensure relative prosperity and stability.
But now, the world has changed.
Great power competition is back, and global trade is eroding, with a shift to regional and ideological alliances.
Our allies are starting to – rightfully – expect us to pull our own weight.
There is a need to expand our tangible economy, exporting oil & gas to desperate allies, and building real weapons.
It’s a somewhat harsher world, one based more on the cold facts rather than on how people ‘feel’ things should be in some sort of ideal situation.
This kind of world requires more rationality and less emotion when it comes to political decisions.
‘Climate action’ might ‘feel’ good to many Canadians.
The oil & gas sector might seem ‘outdated’ or ‘dirty’ to some (which is of course absurd since demand will be going up for years and all the ‘clean’ aspects of our society couldn’t exist without the oil & gas sector).
But how things feel or seem doesn’t change reality.
We need oil & gas, and we need to sell it.
‘Climate action’ in practice amounts to making Canadians poorer while other countries profit from the opportunities we eschew.
When the Trudeau government choses not to sell more LNG to Germany or Japan, choses to hold back the energy sector, and choses to impose a carbon tax that goes up and up and up, that means we lose out on billions of dollars.
It means we are poorer.
It means things cost more in relative terms.
There is no way around this.
It’s time for Canadians to connect the dots and realize that politicians like Justin Trudeau and Jagmeet Singh must be defeated if our country is to return to the path of real prosperity.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
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