goldstein: mark carney must kill justin trudeau’s anti-growth agenda
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if prime minister mark carney seriously wants to address canada’s number one economic crisis – low productivity – he must scrap the anti-growth environmental polices of the justin trudeau government.
his major political opponents will be trudeau-era liberals and environmental activists, including the radical green groups trudeau incorporated into his government.
they describe carney’s proposed fast-tracking of environmental regulations, cancellation of ev mandates and memorandum of understanding with alberta premier danielle smith to build a new oil pipeline from alberta to b.c.. as a betrayal of the high carbon tax policies he advocated before becoming pm.
but what they are really opposing is increasing canada’s productivity – the measure of how efficiently an economy produces wealth.
increasing productivity only way to make life more affordable
increasing productivity is the only way to improve canada’s standard of living and make life more affordable for the average citizen.
redistributing income, as the liberals have been doing for a decade, doesn’t increase productivity, which has been on the decline for decades in canada and, in recent years, has completely stalled.
it’s been described as everything from a “break the glass” emergency by the bank of canada to “the achilles heel” of the canadian economy, even by the trudeau government.
we lag far behind the g7 in productivity, especially the u.s.
this doesn’t mean canadian workers are lazy.
low productivity is the result of many factors led by government over-regulation and high taxation, which discourages private sector investment, limits spending on research and development, and leads to a risk-averse economic culture.
the problem for carney is that increasing productivity, which he has pledged to do, will inevitably result in increased industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
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turning canada into energy super power will increase emissions
turning canada into an energy super power, as carney has promised, will increase emissions.
so will building and permitting major infrastructure projects at “speeds not seen in generations,” as carney has called for.
ditto spending 2% of gdp on defence, as carney committed to last year, and 5% by 2035.
when an economy grows it uses more energy and most of canada’s energy is produced using fossil fuels, which increase emissions.
the only time they fell dramatically in the modern era occurred doing the 2008-2009 global recession and the 2020 pandemic.
carney knows this. it’s why he has abandoned trudeau’s absurd pledges to reduce emissions by at least 40% compared to 2005 levels by 2030 and at least 45% by 2035 as unachievable.
he’s described these policies, correctly, as “too much regulation, not enough action” with a lot of talk “and then nothing happens” – at a cost of more than $200 billion to canadian taxpayers to date and more than $500 billion if you add in provincial abatement programs, without even considering municipal ones.
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trudeau government’s emissions targets absurd
claims by trudeau and his environment ministers from catherine mckenna to steven guilbeault that canada was on track to meet its emissions targets were always absurd, as anyone who could do basic math figured out a decade ago.
while carney has left trudeau’s policy of net zero emissions by 2050 in place, a promise to do something 24 years from now is as meaningless as it sounds – and if you can’t meet the 2030 and 2035 targets, you’re not going to meet the 2050 target.
achieving trudeau’s 2030 target, for example, based on the latest government data, would require the equivalent of shutting down canada’s entire oil and gas sector in four years, provoking a massive recession.
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some liberals have seen the light.
former liberal mp martha hall findlay, director of the university of calgary’s school of public policy and a previous supporter of carbon capture and storage, recently wrote in the globe and mail that canada should back away from carbon abatement programs for now and focus on building new infrastructure.
“the canadian economy is like a highly mortgaged house with a leaky roof,” findlay wrote.
“we have much to fix, and already a lot of debt. instead of spending scarce resources on things that might make us feel good but which won’t do much to help a global challenge, we must generate more revenue for the things that we really need: economic diversification, national defence, our sovereignty and other things key to our society such as health care, education, clean water and air.
“for canada, more revenue needs more productive export infrastructure: energy pipelines, ports, mines and rail capacity for our goods.”
that’s the dilemma carney faces.
to achieve his economic goals, he must abandon the trudeau government’s failed obsession with reducing emissions.
whether he will do so by reminding liberal malcontents that he’s the only reason they’re still in government after the productivity debacle of the trudeau era, or cave in to their anti-growth agenda as an excuse for doing nothing, is an open question.
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