Canada is staring at a once-in-a-generation energy opportunity. By reinvesting in our energy system, we can make life cheaper for Canadians, stimulate the economy, attract investment and talent from abroad, and reduce the costs of climate risk. Our American neighbours used to say the same thing about their country, but have recently changed course.
Today, our southern neighbours are adjusting to a new reality in which huge swathes of federal support for clean tech and climate science have been eliminated. Attempts to align and solve big social challenges through energy and climate investments seem dead at the federal level, at least for now. Meanwhile, U.S. federal support for domestic oil, gas and coal is increasing.
From a Canadian perspective, it is tempting to write off Washington’s U-turn as simply another fiasco from the South. But let’s not let our Canadian pride blind us; we ignore the lessons of the U.S. experience at our peril.
On his first day in office, Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled the consumer carbon tax, following through on a key campaign promise that helped put him in office. Conversation around Bill C-5, which authorizes Ottawa to fast-track major infrastructure projects, has within mere months regressed back into the tired binary of “yes or no” on the issue of pipelines. Is this the beginning of U.S.-style retreat from business-savvy and technology-forward clean energy and climate ambition?
Two key U.S. assumptions behind recent energy and climate policymaking have been severely weakened, if not undermined altogether. Unpacking them helps to determine whether they also apply to Canada.
The first assumption was that a public narrative about climate risk as an “existential threat to humanity” would trump other more immediate, day-to-day concerns for regular people. It didn’t.
Judging by both electoral results and public polling, issues related to fiscal policy, immigration and energy dominance are valued more highly than action to reduce climate risk. Sounding the alarm about a climate emergency simply did not move enough people to prioritize that issue.
The second was that the shortest path to decarbonizing the economy was to align climate action with global movements for the rights and dignity of oppressed peoples. So far this has not been true.
The U.S.’s Green New Deal, for example — a non-binding Congressional resolution that laid out a vision for a broad public mobilization for job creation, science and engineering R&D, and ambitious expansion of clean energy and infrastructure — was based on a worldview in which climate risk and its potential solutions are issues that naturally align with anti-capitalism, workers rights, battling unemployment, and social and economic justice movements.
Not only has this not worked, in some cases, it has pitted the progressive left in the U.S. against the very technologies and policies that show promise of actually making life cleaner and more affordable.
The reflex to entangle social justice movements with climate movements may be even stronger in Canada. But the U.S. experience shows that this simply may not be the best approach, no matter how noble the intentions.
With the benefit of a front seat to the U.S. experience, Canada can learn from the path taken (and not taken) south of the border, and blend the lessons with our uniquely Canadian opportunities and challenges.
Immigration in Canada is not the lightning-rod issue that it is in the U.S. although anti-immigration sentiment is on the rise and illegal immigration is being more forcefully curtailed. But now may be the best time in decades for Canada to invite and welcome some of the world’s most talented thinkers, builders and professionals into our communities. These individuals and their families can help us build and retool our energy systems and infrastructure for the next generations, even as the U.S. moves in the opposite direction. We should redouble our efforts to attract and welcome them to Canada.
Affordability, inflation, and the rising cost of living are also intimately connected to energy and climate risk. Home energy bills have risen in every province in Canada over the past five years, while property insurance costs continue to rise annually driven in part by increasingly costly flood and fire events. Energy costs also drive inflation, since energy costs directly affect costs of everything from food to housing to health care. Climate risk will make affordability worse if we don’t act.
The path to stable long-term affordability lies in reducing fundamental costs and inefficiencies in our current energy system. Making energy cleaner, cheaper and more reliable will bring down everyday costs everywhere, but only if we explicitly link these objectives. A cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy system actually makes life more affordable and livable, and at the same time reduces our exposure to climate risk and its costs over the long term.
On Indigenous partnership, truth and reconciliation, Canada truly stands apart from the U.S. Even Carney’s sheepish and last-minute outreach to Indigenous leaders for consultation around Bill C-5 looks pretty great from the perspective of the U.S, in which such a gathering convened under any president is hard to imagine.
Nation-to-nation dialogue, Indigenous ownership, and respect for land and treaty rights still represent fabulous pathways for Canada to expand responsible nation-building infrastructure, clean energy investment and job creation with so many Indigenous communities. In this way, clean energy investments, if done well, can also be investments in truth and reconciliation and shared nation-building among all peoples of Canada.
Finally, the concept of Canada as an emerging “energy superpower” can be a new and unifying national narrative that might just transcend traditional interprovincial friction. Getting there means going beyond the oil and gas-centric vision of the 20th century, and embracing the energy system transformation of the 21th century that is already underway.
I see an opportunity for an even bolder and more inclusive Canadian energy superpower. Becoming an energy superpower should be less about “made in Canada” for the sake of national pride, and more about creating goods and services that can help the global economy enjoy cheaper, safer, cleaner power too. Canada’s superpower can be in helping to usher in a cheaper, cleaner world while bringing revenue, talent and intellectual property back to Canada.
This means manufacturing and exporting the specialized electronics and switching equipment used in power systems; building data centers powered by low-carbon electricity in Canada; and powering our Northern and remote communities in ways that other nations can copy, among other things. a cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy system can actually make life more affordable and livable, and at the same time reduce our exposure to climate risk and its costs over the long term. All of these paths build on existing Canadian strengths; we’re not re-inventing the wheel.
When I worked in the U.S. Senate during the first Obama administration, Canadian trade representatives from the Canadian Embassy in Washington would proudly display maps with arrows indicating supply chains and trade flows in Canada and the US. All of the arrows pointed North-South, not East-West. For the first time in my lifetime, it feels like the spirit of the energy conversation is realigning East-West, toward some kind of new Canadian vision.
Perhaps our Canadian modesty will dull this vision. But it really does feel as though Canada has a moment to take a giant leap forward in nation-building, more so than at any other time I can remember. Cleaner, cheaper, more reliable energy systems that also reduce our long-term climate risk can be the red thread that binds these ambitions into a unifying national movement. It’s Canada’s opportunity to seize.
