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At last, the long national nightmare for Canada’s oil and gas industry is over. It loves to pretend it’s been labouring under the yoke of green socialism for almost a decade now, so industry leaders were positively jubilant about the news that Justin Trudeau plans to resign as prime minister. As Bob Geddes, the president of Ensign Energy Services, told the Calgary Herald’s Chris Varcoe, “There’s no question from the beginning that his purpose was to kill the oil and gas business. This is a good day for Canada.”
There is, of course, very much a question about that, especially when you look at the increase in oil and gas production over Trudeau’s term. We’ll get to that. But this is the consensus view within the oil and gas industry’s information bubble: Trudeau was the source of all their problems, and removing him will be the solution. "The Liberal government (under Prime Minister Trudeau) has made Canada's oil and gas sector uncompetitive," Heather Exner-Pirot, special advisor on energy to the Business Council of Canada, told the Canadian Press. "So there is some optimism now that Canada will finally be a place that's open for business."
It’s worth noting that while Canada was “closed” for oil and gas business, the industry increased its oil production by more than a million barrels per day. Its biggest companies posted record profits in 2022, and then almost did it again in 2023. Meanwhile, in 2024 the federal government completed the construction of the first pipeline to Pacific tidewater in decades, one that immediately (and significantly) increased oil prices received by the same companies complaining so bitterly about Trudeau’s reign. LNG Canada, meanwhile, is set to begin operations in 2025, and will have a similarly beneficial impact on the price of natural gas in Canada and the companies that sell it.
The truth here, one the oil and gas industry’s advocates would never dare acknowledge, is that Justin Trudeau has been the best prime minister their industry has seen in decades. He has done more to advance their interests, often at the cost of his own political capital, than any of his living predecessors. In addition to TMX and LNG Canada it also fought successfully for Line 3, a major expansion project that faced significant political resistance from the Democratic governor and other politicians in Michigan. Oh, and it also threw more than a billion dollars at the oil and gas industry to help it clean up its old oil and gas wells.
Trudeau’s biggest impact on the oil and gas industry’s economic wellbeing may be yet to come. Its longer-term viability in a decarbonizing global economy, after all, will depend on it reaching its stated net zero targets. That’s an increasingly unlikely prospect given the industry’s lack of recent progress and the perverse political incentives that Trump and Poilievre will create around climate change. But if they do somehow get there, they’ll have Trudeau’s policies to thank for ushering them down that road.
His government took the baton from Rachel Notley’s NDP on industrial carbon pricing, enforcing the rising carbon price that would have otherwise been abandoned by the UCP government and its oil and gas industry funders. It created a generous tax credit for the carbon capture and storage projects the industry claims are essential to its decarbonization efforts. It even provided industry with a kind of insurance against Pierre Poilievre’s pledge to “axe the tax” in the form of so-called “carbon contracts for difference.”
And yes, the Liberals created an emissions cap for the oil sand that formalized the industry’s own stated commitments and capacities. Said industry could have used to advertise its dedication to being the most ethical source of petroleum on earth, and embraced the challenge of doing what it said it would. Instead, like so many of the Trudeau government’s climate policies, the emissions cap was portrayed as an intolerable affront to their economic interests — yet another supposed example of Trudeau trying to “kill” their industry.
Ironically, this might have been Trudeau’s biggest gift to the oil and gas industry: a boogeyman that it and its political patrons could use to distract shareholders and voters from the sector’s litany of failures. Trudeau’s election in 2015 almost immediately blinded many Albertans to the true source of their economic challenges that began with the 2014 crash in oil prices engineered by Saudi Arabia. Most have declined to regain the use of their sight ever since.
At some point, though, they’ll have to open their eyes. When they do, they’ll see that Alberta isn’t in control of its destiny here, and it hasn’t been for a very long time. It’s at the mercy of a petroleum market that’s in the midst of a massive transformation that no domestic politician can arrest, much less reverse. Global demand for oil will almost certainly peak in the first four years of a Pierre Poilievre government, with demand for gas soon to follow. By then, the big question will be how fast it will fall.
Trudeau’s government and its climate policies were all about preparing Alberta’s oil and gas industry for that moment. When it arrives — and it will — they might want to apologize to the prime minister they’ve so loved to hate.
Comments
I can hardly wait for the day when oil prices begin to crash. I just hope it happens while Danielle Smith is still premier of Alberta.
It will be interesting to see that day when Albertans finally realize all these protectionist policies were for naught. Someone who is supposed to steward an economy but fails to diversify it against obvious threats is performing economic malpractice.
have you listened to Pierre Polieve? he acts as if Trudeau has done nothing and Pierre is going to wave his magic wand and change everything..
meanwhille not only did Trudeau build the Trans Mountain pipeline, which has triplied shipments and done sweet F all for lowering prices to at the pumps and home, but there is also LNG in BC that has had taxpayers pay 100% for the Site C dam, which again does sweet F all for energy in BC let along criminal prices we pay, but also billions of taxpayer's money has went to fast track the LNG processing plants, [two in bc] and the pipe line required to ship it to the coast and the LNG port.
who else wants to see a law against politicians lying and another law forceing Pierre and the rest of the pricks to discluse who and how much is lobbying government.
unlimited lobbying is NOT a democracy.
so you may be wondering wtf is the anwer.. NATIONALISE CANADA'S RESOURCES, KICKING CORPORATIONS OUT OF CANADA.
No thanks. Too much work. Too open to a massive backlash against irrational rhetoric. Instead, let the fossil fuel industry stand on its own without public money or supportive narratives. It will fail soon enough because its export markets are moving toward cheaper, more reliable and less problematic renewables, and its domestic market is slowly but surely electrifying.
I'm with you Alex - let their beloved 'free' market take them down. The oil sands companies in particular have never been exposed to a "free market", not since the Alberta government funded the early research on "tar sands" 60 years ago.
Good overview of an oil industry that has recently sealed its position as the true leader of the never-more-powerful corporate world, distinguishing itself by being truthful enough to call out, once and for all, the long-held myth of "corporate responsibility."
In the spirit of this newfound honesty, it can now "lean in" to its "core competency" of embodying the apotheosis of male hubris that drives and defines the "best" CEO's (predominantly male) with the slogan that captures their singular desire to "drill, baby, drill" with NO constraints, particularly from the female element....
The thing about reaching the top is there's nowhere else to go but down, especially when competing with the most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world joining forces in a bid to finally actualize the ultimate male dream to "rule the world."
It also needs to be pointed out that the source of the campaign that put a bunch of psychopaths in power is the same one that completely vilified Trudeau personally beyond all reason in a way that we haven't seen since the one against Rachel Notley.
Interestingly, Trudeau was also despised for being too "effeminate." I mean, a DRAMA teacher when we all know that "leadership" means sticking to the male model of a "low-drama narrative," preferably in a monotone, Poilievre's stock in trade.
That alone may have propelled him to his unlikely and TOTALLY undeserved position.
My earliest recollections of the unprecedented defamation opportunities provided by the internet (years ago before the comments section was removed so it was still shocking) were the "liberal" use of names like "Trudy, Justine, and Turdeau."
More civilized versions speak of him as "the kid," remembering him with his father, judging him for both NOT being as intelligent as him, but also for simply BEING his kid. Talk about a "whipping boy." So we should have all learned by now why the word "civil" is the root of the word "civilization." Trudeau DID try to hold the line on basic civility because he had more class and better manners, but also because he was primarily a good-faith actor sitting across the aisle for YEARS from the absolute f***king catcalling, hooting, obstructionist for the sake of it OPPOSITE, somehow overlooked by everyone always.
He's a fighter type, like he said, and deserved a revenge tour like no one else, but has also been given zero credit for stepping away, just for also doing THAT wrong.
I've lost all respect for the NDP in so shamelessly joining the feeding frenzy, an excellent example of how NOT to be a leader.