The Trudeau government has launched a fresh new offensive in its economic war on Western Canada—once again under the guise of a brutally ill-conceived climate policy.
Oblivious to the consequences and unprepared to offer alternatives, federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau let her provincial counterparts know last week that there would be no compromise on her plan to, effectively, reduce fertilizer use by close to one-third. That means farms will be less productive and will earn less money. Bibeau insists farmers, due to their love of the land, will embrace her plan.
While one supposes she had to say that, the reaction by Dutch farmers when their government imposed something similar indicates the minister may be mistaking raised fingers for open arms. The Netherlands, despite billions of euros in “transition” assistance, has been rife with blockades and violent protests—police opened fire on a tractor at one point—since it brought in its plan to reduce nitrous oxide emissions by 50 percent over the next eight years.
“Holland is a volcano ready to erupt,” is how Walter Joosten of the Farmers’ Defence Force put it to Le Monde.
Canada’s plan calls for a 30 percent reduction from 2020 levels and the feds appear ready to ignore pleas for balance from the provinces, producers and industry. Fertilizer Canada has been particularly vocal in its promotion of something called 4R Nutrient Stewardship—a practice it claims can reduce fertilizer-based emissions by up to 25 percent while keeping farmers competitive and helping the country meet its goal of $85 billion in agricultural exports by 2025. Provinces have asked for intensity targets—the volume of food produced compared to the amount of fertilizer consumed. But nope. As with so many things federal these days, there is no room for compromise.
Alberta Agriculture Minister Nate Horner, according to the Toronto Sun, said the federal government is oblivious to the fact the world is looking to Canada to increase—not decrease—its production in order to mitigate global food shortages exaggerated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But so far, all indications are the feds simply don’t care and are prepared to face consequences that include nationwide price hikes in groceries, reduced economic strength on the prairies, and worldwide food shortages rather than collaborate on their climate targets. Canada is responsible for about 1.5 percent of global emissions.
If that isn’t enough of a gut-punch, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault—the man who as heritage minister tried to regulate free speech on the internet—remains hell-bent on smashing the oil and gas industry in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
His plan calls for a 40 percent reduction in that sector’s emissions (below 2005 levels), also by 2030. Again, this comes at a time when, just as with agriculture, there is a need for Canada to be increasing production to meet Europe’s energy needs, currently held hostage by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pipelines.
Guibeault’s plan is viewed as nonsensical by even those on the left of the spectrum such as Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley.
“It’s a fantasy—we’re not going to get there,” she told the media in March, adding on Twitter that “we need Ottawa to work with Alberta, not around us.”
Meanwhile, the prime minister continues to fly back and forth across the country, aimlessly dropping in for photo ops at summer camps and other random locations as if the world was one big Seinfeld episode.
If this government was serious about climate change, it would encourage the export of Canadian oil and gas—while still working to reduce emissions per barrel—in order to reduce the world’s dependence on far less environment-friendly products from places like Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Iran and, yes, good old Russia.
If Canada was serious about addressing nitrous oxide emissions, it would be investing in the export of 4R-type and other ideas that maintain yields and enhance global security.
But the only thing this increasingly unserious government run by unserious people appears concerned with is sowing division and anger.
As Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe put it on Instagram: “The same government who alienated our oil and gas sector is now putting global food security at risk by attacking the hard working agricultural producers across western Canada.”
Of course it is.
Justin Trudeau could not have been more clear regarding his intentions when, in the 2019 French election debate, he implored people to elect more Liberal Quebeckers and more Liberal francophones so that he and they would have the power to bring Western Canadian leaders and the “oil companies that support them” to heel. Thus did he win an election by cravenly campaigning against part of his own country.
So it’s no surprise that when it comes to the West’s leading industries—no matter how necessary they are to the nation’s sustenance and world’s health and stability—the hammer keeps smashing down. Over and over again. And it won’t stop.
