The controversy still rages over Canada trying to achieve a Net Zero emissions rate by 2030 with its Carbon Tax. Canadians for Affordable Energy President Dan McTeague says Canada cannot achieve Net Zero, and notes it's a ridiculous goal altogether. He explains people are starting to realize the error behind it all.

McTeague explains some believe that the adoption of electric vehicles may very well keep demand for fuel down. He says that's a possibility. However, with just one, two, or three per cent of an influence, it's not apparent just yet. 

"Then of course, there is the overall geopolitical issue in the other sense, that there's nothing to see. Everything's fine. The world's just going about its way, so we don't need to hear rallying prices. All of those factors can really make longer-term predictions challenging and in my case, of course, it's probably easier that I try to guess a few numbers in the upcoming lottery than to try to figure out where prices are going to be in a month and a half." 

McTeague says he attended the Canada Strong and Free conference late last month, and the theme was Technology versus Taxes. The purpose was to point out that Canada can better manage the targeting of its goals on emissions by not going after people, and instead finding more creative ways to incentivize companies to build the kind of projects that would be consistent with what many people want. 

"People want less emissions and most importantly, less pollutant products. The conference that I attended was specifically for that. I'm not really a big fan of taxation of individuals when taking a carrot goes a lot further than carrying a stick." 

He explains he's also not a big fan of the hysteria over zero emissions. 

"I think the science is very much debatable. That's not to say that weather patterns can't create disturbing events, but nothing that I would see that's extraordinary. Considering that some of the best scientists in the country and in North America say that the argument is not settled, I guess I fall in the category of those who reject outright the idea of referring to CO2 as pollution. Unless someone has failed Grade 4 science, everyone knows that that is not the case. It certainly can't be in the case of Canada producing 1.5 per cent of the 3 per cent that makes up the world's total amount of CO2 which is in the atmosphere. It comes to .04 per cent. I mean, seriously, the amount of involvement of CO2. . . If CO2 is toxic or a pollutant, then we might as well just pack it in and say so is oxygen." 

McTeague says, the pendulum has gone so far to the extreme over climate catastrophism, that most people weren't anticipating what all this was really doing is putting a lot of money out there for grifters. 

"But at the same time, it's making life extraordinarily unaffordable, and unnecessarily so, for most Canadians," continue McTeague. "I think governments are now learning a very hard lesson that you have to find ways to help people, not to hinder them and make life more miserable for them, especially in a country like Canada, which is, as your province (Manitoba) and my province (Ontario) have demonstrated, no stranger to new clean technologies. We'll adopt those as they become available, but we're not going to try to get ahead of technology, reality, and science by pretending that we can simply throw these things away and and somehow others get a pass."

He explains there is a huge irony in the overall picture. McTeague explains Canada can produce a lot of clean energy through natural gas. He notes our standard of producing oil is excellent. 

"But if we're going to take the idea that our Prime Minister has, that is to say, that we're going to continue to think there's no business case, then the rest of the world is going to look at it, shrug their shoulders, and move on. But the litany of world leaders who come to Canada, asking Canada to step up to the plate because it has some of the largest, cleanest resources in the world, is a take-note moment. They are asking Canada for its natural gas and oil, but not here to buy hydrogen, tulips, wood or biomass. All those things are important, but they're certainly not going to drive their economies, and our inability to sell to the rest of the world is going to do a lot to hinder ours." 

While McTeague says he's not a big fan of the oil industry and they're not much of a fan of his. He explains this is so, seeing as he's been predicting gas prices that denied them millions of dollars in potential windfall profits by telling people in advance what the price is going to be in markets where there is usually a response.

"I think they've played the game of get along just to go along. They don't want to really rock the boat. There are people out there who will no doubt take the time and seriously look and say, 'Well, if you are going to require an infinite amount of mining to meet these net zero goals of 80 per cent to 90 per cent electrification, where will you get the minerals from?' Well, the mining itself isn't done by the snap of a finger. It takes years to produce it. And if anybody took the time to recognize what is involved in mining, they would quickly realize that it's far more damaging than anything the oil and gas, or manufacturing sector, could conjure up. In other words, mining is the injurious form -- the most emitting form -- of energy. And yet here we are pretending that EV's are made by Pixie dust, not recognizing the amount of energy and the amount of disturbing of the Earth's crust in order to make a few pounds of lithium batteries -- the neodymiums, the germaniums. . .  I mean, there's a number of products that go into these things. These are extremely difficult to mine. They're very expensive and very damaging to the environment, and very intrusive to environments to bring those about."

He says Canada is claiming that we will have a tenfold increase to meet its net zero goals, but adds someone's going to have to tell the emperor that they have no clothes.

"Mining is extraordinarily damaging to the environment. So, those who are virtue-signalling with their EVs, their solar panels, and their windmills had best understand that the public is no longer going to buy these things, now that they have to pay for them. They admittedly can't afford them. I think serious questions are being asked of those who have been making money promoting these pie-in-the-sky dreams that, at the end of the day, leave a country like Canada, rich in resources, relatively destitute." 

McTeague leaves us with the thought that all of this needs to be done in far more practical manner, in a style of dealing with them as they come along, and being realistic.

"My old boss, Jean Chrétien, used to always say, 'Look in the pool before you dive.' It's nice to be wanting to do these things. I think we all want to do right by the environment, but we can't do so by disenfranchising people and doing far worse than advancing the ability for other countries to catapult ahead of us. The world needs oil. The question is with Canada having the third largest provable reserves in the world, do we want it coming from Russia, or Venezuela or Iran? Or do you want it from Canada? And do we want to stop China and help China end its addiction on building coal plants every couple of weeks by selling them more LNG (liquefied natural gas)?"

He notes when fanatics block pipelines and think we can electrify everything, and they're willing to spend trillions of dollars of money we don't have, people need to realize that our priorities are wrong.

"We aspire to do better things, but there's a lot of old slip between the cup and the lip. I think we need to get real and getting real means let's achieve the things. Let's set those goals but not kill ourselves doing it, which is what we're doing in this country, unfortunately."

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