Canada is Struggling

Diane Francis: Canada is a lightweight nation

https://financialpost.com/diane-francis/diane-francis-canada-is-a-lightweight-nation


OPEC kicked the United States, the West, and the world’s poorest nations in the teeth recently with oil production cuts that will raise prices to help finance Russia’s war against Ukraine and Europe. And what has Canada done to help allay this situation, given that it is a country with one of the biggest oil and gas reserves on the planet?


There’s no indication that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau phoned President Joe Biden immediately offering to help the global economy and war effort by shipping two million more barrels of oil a day to the U.S. Has he offered to build a natural gas pipeline and LNG projects in Eastern Canada to help Germany and Europe permanently replace Russian gas?


Instead, Trudeau turned down Germany which was hoping to get a deal to import LNG from Atlantic Canada. But Australia did not and within days of rejection by Canada, German utility Uniper signed an enormous deal with an Australian company to bring in more natural gas. Even Norway, another virtue-signalling petro-giant, has boosted production to help Europe fight against Russia’s war against Ukraine and the continent.


Ducking an opportunity to help defeat Vladimir Putin is hardly surprising given that Trudeau’s regime has destroyed all but one of the 18 proposed LNG projects in Canada in the past decade with its destructive, anti-resource agenda.


It’s clear internationally that Canada suffers from a leadership vacuum and isolationism. Canada simply doesn’t pull its weight. It’s a laggard when it comes to meeting NATO commitments or supplying military aid to Ukraine or helping the world cope with Russian and OPEC price gouging. The latest reminder of the nation’s ebbing status occurred last week when France’s new ambassador no sooner arrived in Ottawa than he blasted the Liberal/NDP coalition for “navel-gazing” and allowing its military presence worldwide to wither because of sole reliance on the Pentagon.


In an attempt at damage control, Trudeau’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said in a speech in Washington that Canada was open to approving “economically viable” LNG terminals — a questionable assertion given years of Liberal resource obstructionism. Such promises are futile, commented Adam Legge, President of the Business Council of Alberta: “How many boards of directors are going to approve their CEO to go and spend billions of dollars on a project and a process and an application that is highly uncertain at the end of that?”


Canada has also failed to protect its Arctic region — of concern to NATO, given Russia’s militarization of its Arctic region. Last fall, before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon quietly expanded its defense of Canada’s arctic region, with British submarine assistance.


Billed as a plan to beef up NORAD’s surveillance capabilities in the Far North, the move was undertaken because Canada has fallen far behind other Arctic nations. Britain’s top military commander granted an interview to the CBC, in which he essentially said that Canada needed military help. British General Sir Nick Carter said that Britain was “keen to co-operate” and then stated bluntly that the U.K. wants to “co-operate in terms of helping Canada do what Canada needs to do as an Arctic country.”


The Trudeau government has also failed to protect Canadians against foreign vested interests that spent millions on advertisements and activism to prevent and damage Canadian developments, pipelines, and oil projects, according to research from the Alberta government’s Public Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns in 2021.


It showed that Ottawa also damaged Canada’s energy sector, between 2004 and 2019, by giving more than $414 million in Canadian taxpayer funds to 26 environmental organizations, many of which were directly involved in anti-energy campaigns. Only $41 million of the total was handed out before Trudeau’s election in 2015. Such self-sabotage is, frankly, unforgivable. Imagine if Trudeau forked out $414 million to groups against Quebec’s power exports, B.C.’s forestry industry, or Ontario’s auto and banking sectors?


The war in Ukraine highlights the fact that Canada has become a lightweight nation due to a government run by a woke coalition that doesn’t understand economic development, how to protect domestic industries, or the importance of tending and fostering geopolitical alliances. Canadians live in a great, big, rich country that is run by very small-minded, isolated people.