Canadian government federalizes energy in four provinces

Canada has tightened the noose with which it’s choking itself.

The Liberal government of Justin Trudeau on Oct. 23 kept his promise to regulate provinces not meeting federal standards for sacrificial response to climate change.

Starting next year, New Brunswick, Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan will fall subject to a “federal carbon pollution pricing system” that raises prices of hydrocarbon energy and costs for energy-intensive industries.

Avoidance of the word “tax” is just one of many deceptions at play here.

The government also tries to make elevation of energy prices sound like a bargain. It will rebate most of the cost to taxpayers through cash payments. Rebates will exceed costs, it says.

What a deal!

But the salesmanship ignores laughably much.

Like too many programs created by officials craving acclaim for climate leadership, Canada’s punishes affordable energy to make way for politically favored alternatives.

Would-be climate leaders cannot accomplish this without inflicting economic damage.

Alberta is staggering, for example, from the miscalculations of a government that thought it could win toleration for oil sands development by enacting a carbon tax acceptable to Ottawa.

In Ontario, voters replaced their climate leader with a premier who promptly fulfilled his promise to undo costly cap-and-trade and energy-use manipulations.

Trudeau is mistaken if he thinks Alberta and Ontario would have fared better if they had called their economic assaults “carbon pollution pricing.”

Announcing his federalization of energy in four provinces, Trudeau said, “The effects of climate change are everywhere, and they are a constant reminder of the need to act now. While climate change is the biggest challenge of this generation, it also provides the opportunity to do better while growing the economy.”

This urgency, typical of aspirants to climate leadership, is beyond tiresome. And the economic assurances are unsubstantiated by experience.

Political reaction against energy dictates has expelled a government in Ontario and threatens to do so in Alberta. Canadians seem not to be as easily fooled as Trudeau thinks they should be.

(From the subscription area of www.ogj.com, posted Oct. 26, 2018. To comment, join the Commentary channel at www.ogj.com/oilandgascommunity.)