The Liberal emissions cap is yet another attack on Canadian workers
We can't afford to cut oil and gas production. Only our competitors stand to benefit.
The Liberals have launched yet another attack on Canadian workers. This time, with their job-killing oil and gas emissions cap. This radicalism will not only hurt the Canadian economy, but also weaken paycheques and threaten the nearly one million jobs tied to the sector.
The proposed cap, currently in the form of draft regulations announced earlier this month, would limit emissions in the sector to 35 per cent beneath 2019 levels and impose a cap-and-trade system upon the industry. The only explanation is that Justin Trudeau and his activist environment minister’s extreme agenda is to destroy Canada’s energy sector once and for all.
Firstly, it’s clear that an emissions cap amounts to a production cap, which could cut up to $1 trillion from Canada’s GDP, kill over 150,000 Canadian jobs and slow economic growth.
Cutting production would be a critical hit to Canada’s economy. Oil and gas accounted for $209 billion of Canada’s GDP in 2023 and a quarter of the country’s exports. In 2022 alone, the industry provided more than $45 billion in revenue to Canadian governments, funding schools, hospitals, roads and public services. The impact of a production cap would be significant: cutting emissions by 40 per cent below 2021 levels by 2030 would amount to a $247 billion reduction in GDP, according to S&P Global. Canada can’t afford this.
As Canadians face the worst decline in living standards in 40 years and the worst economic growth in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Liberals picked the worst possible time to further cripple our economy. The Business Council of Canada says the cap “will only make Canadians poorer,” and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says the cap “would only exacerbate the financial burden on Canadians.”
After nine years of Trudeau’s economic vandalism, the gap between American and Canadian incomes is the worst in a century and Canada has more invested in the United States than the United States does in Canada. Under this prime minister, over $460 billion in investment dollars have fled Canada for the United States.
Just 10 years ago, American news was enviously reporting that Canada had the richest middle class in the world, with a median income higher than the United States. What happened in 2015? The Liberals came to power and, with the support of the NDP, began their attacks on the economy.
After nine years of disastrous Liberal government policies, confidence in getting big things built is broken, and we are losing to our competitors. The proposed production cap is the first of its kind among major oil and gas-producing countries. Not Canada’s biggest competitor, the United States, nor Russia, Mexico, China, India or a single state in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) self-imposes this stranglehold on their economy and people.
So why is the Liberal Government killing paycheques and kicking our economy when it is down?
By now, the longstanding hate-on for our energy sector within the Liberal government is evident. In 2020, common-sense Conservatives were ringing the alarm over the government’s anti-energy policies when there was $20 billion worth of shovel-ready projects that ended up being blocked by the Liberals. Today, we could only dream of projects that could create thousands of jobs with powerful paycheques long into the future without costing taxpayers a cent.
Yet since 2015, nearly $670 billion worth of investment in resource projects has been lost. And in just the last two years, seven allied countries practically begged us to sell them Canadian liquefied natural gas — but Trudeau sent them packing empty-handed, claiming there was no business case for LNG exports. He should tell that to the Germans, who just opened an LNG terminal from concept to creation in record time.
This is the latest step in the Liberal government’s “phase it out” agenda and follows other radical policies that attack our workers, our competitiveness and our economy. These policies include their costly carbon tax, their oil and gas export ban (Bill C-48), their unconstitutional never-build-anything-anywhere law (Bill C-69) and their job-killing “Sustainable Jobs Act” (Bill C-50).
As jobs, businesses, investment, technology and talent flee Trudeau’s policies, Canada’s competitors and hostile regimes will benefit most. This won’t lower global emissions but will instead line the pockets of competitors who do not share our high environmental and ethical production standards, which will make Canadians poorer.
Instead of killing jobs and raising the cost of traditional energy for Canadians, common-sense Conservatives will scrap the cap and replace Trudeau’s anti-resource bureaucracy with an approval process that gets projects built. We will tackle emissions through technology, not taxes, and greenlight green projects to make zero-emissions energy more affordable. A Pierre Poilievre government will axe the tax and end Trudeau’s economic vandalism to bring home powerful paycheques for our people rather than send our jobs and investments overseas and put dollars in the pockets of dictators.