Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault speaks at the China pavilion during the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP15) in Montreal on Dec. 14, 2022. Lars Hagberg/AFP via Getty Images
For some observers, Canada’s and other Western countries’ steps toward net-zero emissions by 2050 and the impacts on their economies and way of life have one main beneficiary—the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—which its leader Xi Jinping has said is aiming for dominance in “national strength and international influence” within the same timeline, 2049.
“I think there’s a remarkable coincidence between China having its eyes on 2049, the 100-year anniversary of the CCP takeover, as the date at which they want to solidify their position as the sole global superpower, and the rest of the world having embraced this notion of net-zero by 2050,” Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph, told The Epoch Times.
“These two big programs, one in the West and one in China, both end up with the same outcome. But in the West, it’s astonishing, because it’s self-inflicted.”
The latest controversy to emerge from the government’s net-zero push are Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault’s Feb. 12 comments on ending federal funding for new roads and highways as a means to discourage the use of private vehicles and reduce emissions.
Amid a barrage of criticism by premiers and mayors, Mr. Guilbeault attempted to clarify that he only meant “large” road projects. But many premiers said they remain concerned, with Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston even writing a formal letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denouncing Mr. Guilbeault’s comments, as well as the federal carbon tax, for adding to the cost of living for the people of his province.
David Leis, vice-president of the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says such episodes show that Western governments are taking measures detrimental to their nations’ well-being while China seeks to strengthen its status as a dominant power.
“What this does ultimately is undermine our future prosperity,” Mr. Leis told The Epoch Times.
While China is building cross-border energy pipelines, oil tanker routes, and highways via its trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, Canada, due to domestic and U.S. policies, is losing major pipeline projects including the Energy East and Keystone XL pipelines, oil tanker routes (Bill C-48), and now, major road projects, if Mr. Guilbeault’s words are any indication.
China accounted for a third of the world’s plastic materials production in 2022, making it the largest plastic producer by a wide margin. Meanwhile, in Canada, the federal government is currently embroiled in a legal fight with the provinces to classify plastic products as toxic.
Last year, China exported over 5 million vehicles, surpassing Japan as the world’s top automobile exporter. Yet in Canada, Ottawa’s $5,000 EV consumer incentive, as part of its policy to phase out gas-powered vehicles, will be lining the pockets of firms that manufacture in China and sell to Canada, since the scheme doesn’t have a local-manufacturing requirement.
And as Canada and other Western countries phase out coal plants, impacting the livelihood of communities built around coal mines in the process, China is ramping up its coal generation.
The Roads Remarks
Mr. Guilbeault’s comments on road investments were too much even for those in a similar ideological camp, including Calgary Mayor Jyoti Gondek, who said she “can’t believe that statement was even made.”
In his Feb. 16 letter to the prime minister, Premier Houston highlighted what worried him about Mr. Guilbeault’s remarks.
Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston responds to a question from the media on the final day of the summer meeting of the Canada's Premiers at the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, B.C., on July 12, 2022. The Canadian Press/Chad Hipolito
“Minister Guilbeault has indicated that the Federal Government has decided that existing road infrastructure is ‘perfectly adequate to respond to the needs we have’ and that there will be no more envelopes from the federal government to enlarge the road network,” he wrote.
But the minister’s stated reasoning—that this is to discourage people from driving private vehicles and use public transit or cycle or walk instead to lower emissions—is not practical for Nova Scotians, Mr. Houston said.
The premier said many in his province live in rural areas without public transit and can’t be expected to walk or bike everywhere. He also noted that the federal carbon tax is placing an additional burden on his constituents.
“Statements like the ones by Minister Guilbeault villainize them in a way that is completely unfair,” Mr. Houston wrote.
Other premiers and mayors have raised similar issues with the minister’s remarks and Ottawa’s climate change policies.
Commenting on his controversial remarks, Mr. Guilbeault said on Feb. 14 that he “should have been more specific.”
“We have programs to fund roads, but we have said that … we don’t have funds for large projects like the Troisième lien that the CAQ [Quebec’s ruling party] has been trying to do for many years,” he said. The Troisième lien is a road tunnel project aimed at linking Quebec City to its south shore across the St. Lawrence River.
Energy Sector
While many countries have signed up to U.N. emissions targets, Canada’s current government has shown itself to be one of the most committed to implementing related policies.
As he announced a new cap on oil and gas emissions at the U.N. COP28 summit in Dubai last December, Mr. Guilbeault boasted that his policy is the “first emissions cap from a major oil and gas producing nation in the world.”
The measure has been denounced as a defacto cap on production by energy-rich provinces, which have been fighting the feds on other legislation and policies targeting the energy sector for the past few years.
This includes the Impact Assessment Act, dubbed by former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney as the “no more pipelines act,” which imposed further federal environmental assessment requirements for major projects. Last October, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the act is “largely unconstitutional.” Ottawa is planning to make adjustments and introduce a new iteration of the act.
A proposed tanker route out of Kitimat, B.C., related to the Northern Gateway project is shown on a map on Sept, 19, 2013. The project was effectively cancelled after the federal government banned oil tankers from B.C.’s north coast. The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward
Ottawa has said it’s also working on a “just transition“ act, in line with the guidelines of the 2015 Paris Climate Accords, to facilitate “a just and equitable transition to a low-carbon future for workers and their communities.” Alberta and Saskatchewan say this means Ottawa is phasing out oil and gas production.
Canada’s once booming oil and gas sector, which at its peak in mid-2014 accounted for 24 percent of the country’s total industrial investment, hasn’t yet recovered since the price crash that occurred in late 2014 to early 2015. Industrial groups like the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers blame the cumulative effects of different federal policies, such as the Impact Assessment Act, for creating a hostile environment and driving away long-term energy project investments.
A 2021 assessment by The Epoch Times showed that between 2015 and 2020, an estimated $175 billion in energy project investments were cancelled in Canada.
Net-Zero 2050
The federal government passed a law in 2021 to commit to reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As part of the legislation, Ottawa set the 2030 emissions target at 40–45 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. The law also requires the environment minister to establish the subsequent 2035, 2040, and 2045 targets at least 10 years in advance and to provide plans to achieve those targets.
One of the main methods used by the government is its carbon tax, which increases each year.
Canada is also ending unabated (without taking steps to reduce emissions, like carbon capture) coal-fired electricity by 2030, and mandating that all new vehicles sold be electric by 2035.
Another initiative is the requirement for provinces to have net-zero electricity grids by 2035. Alberta and Saskatchewan have said this will not be possible in the Prairies, which rely heavily on natural gas for energy generation.
Another major point of contention with the provinces is Ottawa’s initiatives targeting plastics. Last November, a Federal Court ruled that a cabinet order to classify plastic products as toxic was “unreasonable and unconstitutional.” The government says it will appeal the decision.
An oil sands facility is reflected in a tailings pond near Fort McMurray, Alta., in a file photo. The Canadian Press/Jeff McIntosh
Canada’s climate change policies also involve a commitment to fund initiatives in developing countries. Ottawa announced $5.3 billion in “international climate finance commitment” in 2021. Canada’s energy initiatives in foreign aid, driven mainly by renewable energy endeavours, are one of the areas of foreign aid that has had the highest rise in recent years.
Many aspects of climate policies have also become a part of different governmental departments and agencies. The Public Health Agency of Canada, for example, is now publishing reports on the effects of climate change on health, while the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is publishing reports on climate change and security.
Mr. McKitrick says it’s particularly alarming that many financial institutions in the West are cutting off funding for oil, gas, and coal development while China is “massively expanding” its fossil fuel infrastructure.
As a number of commercial banks in the West have phased out funding for oil and gas projects, Chinese commercial banks have ramped up theirs. An analysis by CNBC showed that the Postal Savings Bank of China and the China Minsheng Bank raised their funding of such projects by 1,200 percent and 900 percent respectively between 2016 and 2020, orders of magnitude larger than the third-place holder, the UK-based Standard Chartered bank, which increased funding by around 150 percent.
But the phasing out of investing in fossil fuel energy projects isn’t limited to commercial banks, as multilateral financial institutions, such as the European Investment Bank, are staying away from the sector as well.
The geopolitical impact of this is that developing nations looking for money for energy projects will go to China to get the funding via its different programs, including the Belt and Road Initiative, and become beholden to Beijing due to their debt.
“They’re being turned into client states of China,” Mr. McKitrick says.
In a high-profile case, Beijing took control of a major port in Sri Lanka in 2017 after the country fell behind on loan repayments to the communist regime.
China 2049
Days after becoming CCP leader in 2012, Xi Jinping said that by 2049 the regime would achieve “the China Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
Citing this quote, a 2018 CSIS academic workshop report says this is speaking to Xi Jinping’s ambition for China to become the “central power in the region and beyond.”
A British parliamentary report citing the country’s Intelligence Community makes a similar point.
Workers take down a Belt and Road Forum panel outside the venue of the forum in Beijing on April 27, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images
“2049 … will be the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China and that is very much the timeframe in which China is looking at its global ambitions and its global activities,” says the 2023 report by the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament.
Key in the CCP’s ambitions for this objective have been large projects such as the Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-continent infrastructure plan to establish China-centred land and maritime trade routes.
As well, Beijing has a number of interim goals to achieve superpower status. This includes its “Made in China 2025” plan to make China a powerhouse in manufacturing and high-tech industries. The “Standards 2035” project aims to take this ambition a step further, giving China the role of governing the regulation of emerging technologies.
All of these are on top of Beijing’s increased expenditures on its military and creation of new pacts to shift the balance of power away from the United States toward China.
The regime is also investing heavily in energy projects to fuel its expansion ambitions.
China, which is a net oil and gas importer, has undertaken massive investments in wind and solar generation as well as electric vehicles and batteries. At the same time, it is also significantly expanding its use of coal, adding nearly 50 gigawatts in coal generation capacity in 2023 alone. Moreover, the country’s oil refinery output rose to a record level in 2023, with a 9.3 percent increase compared to a year earlier.
The Double Standard
Mr. McKitrick and Mr. Leis note that while China is currently the largest emissions producer in the world, environmental NGOs seldom raise that point. China accounts for around 30 percent of the world’s emissions, twice that of the runner-up, the United States.
“Western environmental groups are notoriously silent on what China is doing,” says Mr. McKitrick.
“They will complain endlessly about the Canadian energy sector, the American energy sector, regardless of how clean and efficient we are. But they have nothing to offer on what China’s doing, except to make excuses for them and to accept what they say at face value.”
Mr. Leis says that this could in some cases be because some of those advocates may be admirers of China’s socialist and communist system, but that other factors could also be at play.
“In some cases, they have very direct relationships with the Communist Party of China,” he said. “This movement is huge and multifaceted, and it’s doing great damage to the future of the West and other countries as well.”
Mr. Leis says besides China’s long-established elite-capture strategies, a major part of its agenda is being pushed through international organizations such as various NGOs and United Nations agencies.
“They’re the primary instigator of a lot of these policies,” he says.
Coal is loaded onto trucks for delivery to power generation plants, after being unloaded from ships at the port in Lianyungang, in China's eastern Jiangsu Province on July 12, 2023. STR/AFP via Getty Images
A previous Epoch Times analysis showed how current and former CCP officials hold key positions in international organizations, including multiple U.N. agencies, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and many others.
One of the key figures instrumental in setting up U.N. environmental initiatives was Canadian business executive Maurice Strong. The founder and executive director of the United Nations Environment Program from 1972 to 1975, he initiated the first international expert group meeting on climate change in 1992.
Mr. Strong, who passed away in 2015, had major links to China through his business and then later through his U.N. work, and lived in Beijing in the final years of his life.
Mr. Leis draws a parallel between how China evades international climate change pacts that the West stays obligated to, with how the two sides’ commitment to World Health Organization (WHO) requirements has transpired since the pandemic.
He says China didn’t follow any of its ethical and legal requirements to properly disclose the outbreak of the coronavirus, and the WHO enabled that approach.
Days after the first public announcement of the virus outbreak on Dec. 31, 2019, the WHO advised against placing travel or trade restrictions on the country. The organization later repeated the CCP’s claim that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission, while adding that “limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families” could be possible. By the end of that month, the WHO finally declared the outbreak a global health emergency but maintained opposition to travel restrictions on China into the following month.
“In the case of COVID, China didn’t follow the protocols as a member of the World Health Organization,” Mr. Leis says, adding that the country has yet to be accountable and transparent and that the truth of these issues must come out.
Meanwhile, the WHO is coming up with a new governance model of pandemic responses that signatory countries like Canada would be required to follow. Critics such as Conservative MP Leslyn Lewis have said the U.N.’s approach infringes on the sovereignty of member nations.
Mr. Leis said it’s important for Western governments not to limit their own nations’ autonomy and economic capabilities by signing on to global pacts that he says infringe on individual freedoms and property rights.
“It is causing a major impact on our levels of productivity, economic performance, and ultimately our standard of living,” he said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Omid Ghoreishi
Author
Omid Ghoreishi is with the Canadian edition of The Epoch Times.
