Juno News - NDP MP wants to jail people for promoting oil and gas

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all canada's most irreverent talk show here the andrew lawton show

00:01:30.620 on true north on this thursday february 8th we are once again live and out of the corner of my

00:01:37.220 eye i've been on jury watch for the bulk of the day so you may recall over the earlier part of

00:01:44.220 this week and last week i was covering in washington dc the trial of mark stein and

00:01:49.440 Ran Simberg. They've been sued by prominent climate scientist Michael Mann, formerly of Penn

00:01:54.580 State, over comments they made linking what they view as the whitewash of the investigation into

00:02:00.740 misconduct allegations against Michael Mann into the whitewash of the investigation into Jerry 0.59

00:02:06.920 Sandusky, the disgraced pedophile and rapist who had been the head of the Penn State athletics

00:02:12.700 program. Now, the question here is not, do you believe in global warming, which was kind of the 0.95

00:02:19.400 argument that michael mann and his lawyers were putting forward but it's do you have a right

00:02:24.280 to make criticisms of a scientist that are uh perhaps a little bit colorful or inflammatory but

00:02:31.880 can it be inflammatory without being defamatory that was the juxtaposition that was put forward

00:02:37.080 by rand simberg's lawyer so i've been following this trial it's now in its fourth week this is

00:02:42.840 is the fourth day of the fourth week and the jury is excuse me deliberating the jury is out

00:02:48.860 in the most literal sense of the word they went out at about 4 p.m yesterday afternoon

00:02:53.900 they had about 45 minutes of deliberation before the union mandated close of business at the court

00:03:00.280 kicked in and then they had to all go home and restart again this morning and that process began

00:03:06.580 somewhere after 9 a.m. or so, but the jury has been out for the last three to four hours. And I

00:03:14.020 have the Zoom box or WebEx box open on my monitor here. And they've just put like a flash card up

00:03:20.180 in front of where the courtroom would normally be saying the jury is deliberating. So if it looks

00:03:24.160 like movement's coming, I might keep an ear on that. I don't know if we can, I was going to say

00:03:28.300 maybe we could just go to the court stream when they're reading the verdict, but I think I might

00:03:31.460 find myself in contempt of court in the District of Columbia, which is not a fate I would wish on

00:03:36.580 myself or on anyone so that is what we are keeping an eye out for and I actually had a lovely email

00:03:42.800 from Tim that I wanted to read Tim sent a very kind note which he said if I can find the note

00:03:49.040 here he wanted to convey his appreciation for a great run of content recently he said from Stein

00:03:55.820 to Danielle Smith and deserved questions of Polyev you've asked great questions and struck the right

00:04:00.580 tone I've particularly enjoyed the unjust transition series putting faces names and

00:04:06.280 finer detail around the amorphous oil and gas sector is a master stroke. And he says he's

00:04:11.400 learned a great deal. Well, that was a note that made me incredibly happy, Tim. So I thank you for

00:04:15.680 it. And we will have the last installment of that very series, that unjust transition series

00:04:20.980 coming up in just, I don't know, however many minutes. It'll be in today's show.

00:04:25.240 But I want to talk just on the note of oil and gas, talk about feeding right into the discussions

00:04:31.140 I've been having on the show here. The whole point is that our politicians don't understand

00:04:35.380 the oil and gas sector. There's misinformation. The media doesn't get it. And because of that,

00:04:39.940 Canadians don't get it. And then we have Charlie Angus, old Charlie Angus, the member of parliament

00:04:45.680 for Timmons, James Bay, a longtime new Democrat. He had this to say at a press conference this week.

00:04:53.340 Oil has always relied on the big tobacco playbook of delay and disinformation. And so to tackle this

00:05:00.760 immense threat to human health, we need to use many of the strategies that finally took down

00:05:06.200 Big Tobacco. In 1997, the Canadian Parliament banned advertising from Big Tobacco because of

00:05:12.980 the clear threat to human health. This is why I'm so proud to stand here today with representatives

00:05:19.040 of Canada's medical community to state that the time has come to ban all oil and gas advertising.

00:05:26.600 the big tobacco moment has finally arrived for big oil bill c-372 will quote provide a legislative

00:05:35.920 response to a national public health and environmental problem of substantial and

00:05:40.460 pressing concerns the bill will make it illegal for big oil and gas lobby and the gas lobby or

00:05:46.640 their front groups or paid influencers to falsely promote the burning of fossil fuels as a benefit

00:05:52.320 to the public. The legislation will make it illegal to falsely claim that the use of one

00:05:58.540 fuel fossil fuel product is somehow better than another fossil fuel product in improving the

00:06:04.440 environment. And this legislation will target advertising that falsely claims that oil and

00:06:10.500 gas are having a positive impact on the global economy. And we recently learned that toxic

00:06:16.360 contamination from Canada's oil and gas industry is 6,000 times higher than officially reported.

00:06:24.440 This legislation will make it illegal for Canada's oil and gas giants to falsely identify themselves

00:06:30.760 with the health and positive lifestyles of Canadians or with reconciliation of Indigenous

00:06:36.680 people on whose lands the toxic contamination is highest. The big tobacco moment has arrived

00:06:42.840 for companies like Suncor, Imperial, and the oil and gas giants of Canada.

00:06:51.240 The big tobacco moment is here.

00:06:55.080 So what Charlie Angus is saying there is that we need to treat oil and gas advertising

00:07:03.360 the way we treat tobacco advertising, which is to basically send it the way of the dodo bird.

00:07:08.560 Now, here I'm going to read a little bit from the preamble because it sets the tone for what

00:07:13.360 he's advocating. Whereas climate change represents an unprecedented and existential threat to people

00:07:19.980 in Canada and around the world, whereas extreme weather events such as the 2021 heat dome in BC

00:07:25.400 are already proving deadly in Canada and are expected to increase in frequency and magnitude

00:07:30.940 due to climate change. Whereas Canada had its worst wildfire season ever last year, he left out the

00:07:36.620 part where a vast majority of that was all attributed to arson, not to the big oil companies

00:07:42.220 or big tobacco or anyone else apart from many climate activists and arsonists. He says,

00:07:48.360 whereas Canada has made international climate commitments to reduce fossil fuel consumption

00:07:53.280 and reach carbon neutrality, whereas protection of the environment is a valid use of the federal

00:07:58.040 criminal law power, whereas air pollution from fossil fuels causes millions of premature deaths

00:08:04.300 globally and tens of thousands of premature deaths in Canada alone. Sorry, my air quotes

00:08:09.900 are lopsided. There we go. I don't know. I don't know how I got lopsided. Maybe my arms are just

00:08:14.480 not functioning. I bet it was fossil fuels. I bet it was oil. I don't know how, but to use the

00:08:18.620 Charlie Angus playbook, I bet it was oil. It's a climate emergency and he says fossil fuel

00:08:23.480 advertising needs to stop. So here's the thing that is so baffling about this is that he's looking

00:08:31.260 at this big, giant, evil, scary boogeyman

00:08:34.560 of the oil and gas sector.

00:08:35.960 And he's saying they should not be allowed

00:08:37.360 to do any promotion whatsoever.

00:08:39.500 They cannot promote their products.

00:08:41.580 They cannot say they're better.

00:08:43.000 They can't even promote what they're doing for oil and gas,

00:08:46.040 what they're doing for the environment.

00:08:47.380 So they would not be allowed to say,

00:08:49.200 hey, here's what we're doing to meet net zero commitments.

00:08:52.000 They couldn't do it.

00:08:53.040 They couldn't say,

00:08:54.080 here's what we're doing for indigenous communities.

00:08:56.460 They couldn't say,

00:08:57.220 here is what oil and gas is to the Canadian economy.

00:09:01.080 So he is literally, by definition, criminalizing the other side of the bait.

00:09:07.100 He does not want anyone to be able to put forward a position that is in contradiction

00:09:11.060 with the position he has, which is oil and gas equals evil, bad, scary.

00:09:15.380 So this is literally, I mean, this is tin pot dictatorship nonsense here.

00:09:19.800 When you say that no one should have the legal right to debate you, to debate your position,

00:09:24.900 no one should have the right to disagree with you publicly.

00:09:27.580 That's what Charlie Angus is saying there, and he is being absolutely unequivocal about it.

00:09:33.960 So I would say to him that it is tremendously revealing that he does not believe in free speech, does not believe in civil liberties, does not believe in the right to debate, and has an incredibly misguided view of the oil and gas sector and everything it is and does.

00:09:51.080 And I kind of just had a moment where I was distracting myself from work today.

00:09:55.200 So I tried to do something that didn't feel like work, but I could justify as being work.

00:09:59.120 And I use, there's this website called, well, it's a service called Mid Journey, which you

00:10:03.320 can make AI generated images.

00:10:05.020 So I used an AI generated image to make this.

00:10:08.280 So I don't want you to think this is some that I'm, oh yeah, there it is already.

00:10:12.220 So these are, yeah, two prisoners.

00:10:13.680 The one on the left says, what are you in for?

00:10:15.980 The one on the right, I said the oil and gas sector was good for the Canadian.

00:10:21.080 economy. That is the two prisoners there chatting. Now, I realized after I made that image that we

00:10:30.360 find the one upside of this, the one upside of Charlie Angus trying to criminalize the oil and

00:10:35.780 gas sector and promotion thereof is that we finally found a way to make the NDP care about

00:10:40.640 crime. That's the one silver lining of this. We found a way to make it so that the NDP

00:10:46.000 cares about crime and cares about justice. So someone had responded to me on Twitter or X as

00:10:52.840 it's now known. I should have pulled the screenshot to put up there, but it was in the

00:10:56.740 replies to that. They had said, yeah, well, the guy on the left is a pedophile and he'll be out

00:11:00.900 next week. But the guy on the right who promoted the oil and gas sector, he gets the two-year

00:11:06.200 jail sentence, which is sadly a reality. So maybe we can kind of converge two things here. Remember,

00:11:11.660 I spoke a few weeks back about how they're making Law & Order Toronto. Maybe the first episode,

00:11:16.700 the premier of Law & Order Toronto can be, you know, some oil and gas advocate that accidentally

00:11:22.780 put up a tweet that promoted oil and gas and then Charlie Angus goes and slaps the cuffs on them

00:11:28.400 and then they have to get themselves off in the courtroom for the remainder of the episode. I

00:11:33.680 think that would be a very Canadian Law & Order Toronto. They don't go after the guy on the subway

00:11:39.600 that's taking a dump in the corner they don't go after the guy who's shooting up outside your kid's

00:11:44.160 school but they go after the guy who dared to talk about the benefits and virtues of oil and gas

00:11:50.720 and if you if you look at the detail of this the detail of this uh bill uh private members bill c

00:11:58.080 372 uh they're they're literally saying that oil and gas are the new tobacco so that that shows the

00:12:06.320 narrative here that they're trying to peddle and the fact that you couldn't even disagree with that

00:12:09.840 you couldn't say that oh well this is a net zero product this is a way that we're promoting carbon

00:12:16.480 capture this is exactly why the people that have this rabid and this rabid hatred this

00:12:23.520 rabid antagonism of canada's energy sector are so dangerous because they genuinely believe that this

00:12:30.000 is a sector that is meant to be vilified and demonized and by trying to literally criminalize

00:12:36.080 because that's what they're doing it's a literal criminalization of the oil and gas sector they

00:12:42.340 are being tremendously revealing of what their agenda truly is so uh you know basically this

00:12:49.380 is the new future if the ndp has its way i wanted to share a graphic this is from first nations lng

00:12:55.700 and they put up this post on x that charlie angus's bill prevents touting the industry as a

00:13:04.100 tool for Indigenous reconciliation. So they say, should Karen Ogun get two years jail or a $1

00:13:10.440 million fine? She's the CEO of the First Nations LNG Alliance. She promotes LNG development as a

00:13:17.200 way to lift Indigenous people and their communities out of poverty. So if you advocate, if you are an

00:13:23.200 Indigenous person advocating for resource development that benefits the Indigenous people,

00:13:28.660 that is literally, literally against the law under this.

00:13:33.160 And I'll read the direct quote.

00:13:35.300 It is prohibited for a person to promote a fossil fuel

00:13:38.720 or the production of a fossil fuel

00:13:40.900 in a manner that states or suggests that a fossil fuel

00:13:44.240 or the practices of a producer

00:13:45.700 or of the fossil fuel industry

00:13:47.640 would lead to positive outcomes

00:13:49.580 in relation to the environment,

00:13:51.900 the health of Canadians,

00:13:53.360 reconciliation with Indigenous peoples

00:13:55.260 or the Canadian or global economy.

00:13:58.660 So if you, like that lovely woman there, say that oil and gas benefits Indigenous reconciliation or Indigenous people or the Canadian economy, you will be found to have broken criminal law.

00:14:12.160 And you can be literally sent to jail.

00:14:15.720 This is absolutely insane.

00:14:18.300 Now, I don't normally like quoting Warren Kinsella.

00:14:21.800 The only reason I don't like quoting Warren Kinsella is because it means that I have to think

00:14:25.560 about Warren Kinsella, which is not good for my or anyone's mental health. But Warren Kinsella had

00:14:30.600 posted this image on social media, which I will give credit where it's due. It's Charlie Angus

00:14:36.280 in the back of a pickup truck, a GMC Sierra, which does not look like a hybrid. It does not

00:14:42.640 look like it's electric. It's, I don't know why you're seeing half of my, you know, like torso

00:14:48.100 below that there we go uh it doesn't look like it is uh one of these you know fancy environmentally

00:14:54.500 friendly trucks you might even say that he is promoting he is promoting he's so cheery and

00:15:00.980 enthusiastic as he sits in the back of that truck in the flatbed that he is almost promoting

00:15:06.580 something that is rooted in oil and gas so i guess as warren kinsella writes there

00:15:11.620 maybe he should be turning himself into the police station maybe he's on route there right now because

00:15:16.420 that just seems a little too close for comfort i mean you wouldn't do that you wouldn't let yourself

00:15:20.420 be so excited in front of the tobacco aisle at the corner store would you there charlie no

00:15:25.540 so that's exactly where we are in the course of this so let's kind of drill down into why this

00:15:33.940 is dangerous i mean it's i've talked about the oil and gas sector and and the problems there

00:15:38.260 because it's just fundamentally based on misinformation and a misrepresentation of

00:15:44.100 what that sector is in canada how diligent they are at promoting environmentalism and conservation

00:15:51.700 but there's the free speech angle as well and you know i've had a couple of chats with people

00:15:57.060 about this over the last day or so since news of this private members bill was released but

00:16:02.420 the thing about it that is so disturbing is that i couldn't even say if i were to get into a debate

00:16:09.060 with charlie angus and i've invited him on the show in the past he's never wanted to come on

00:16:12.980 But I couldn't say, well, you know, Charlie, I think, you know, even if we disagree on oil,

00:16:17.540 your bill would be, it would be contradicting of free speech.

00:16:23.340 And that's not a Trump card.

00:16:25.000 I mean, he would say, so what?

00:16:27.040 Because you're talking about people who fundamentally reject the idea that free speech is a positive.

00:16:32.300 So if you were to say, well, this bill is bad or it's unconstitutional or it's anti-liberty,

00:16:36.480 if you were to say any of that, you would actually be very much at odds with any position

00:16:42.620 that they'd be willing to take on

00:16:43.800 because he is part of a group.

00:16:45.500 He's part of a cohort

00:16:46.420 that believes free speech is the problem.

00:16:49.840 He doesn't care.

00:16:50.820 His right to speak freely

00:16:51.960 against oil and gas is fine.

00:16:54.580 His right to vilify that sector,

00:16:57.180 his right to vilify indigenous people 1.00

00:16:59.520 that value resource development,

00:17:01.240 his right to do all of that is fair game.

00:17:03.500 His and his supporters' rights

00:17:05.060 if they want to protest projects,

00:17:06.740 maybe even by sitting

00:17:08.200 and camping out on rail lines,

00:17:10.060 all of that's fair game.

00:17:11.040 they have the right to do that, but no one who is taking the other position has that right. No one

00:17:18.020 who's taking the other position has that right. So this is to me a baffling, but not all that

00:17:24.420 unsurprising, if you can square those two terms development in the course of this debate here.

00:17:29.300 Now, one thing that I wanted to bring up when we talk about federal politics right now is that I

00:17:34.240 think most Canadians are probably not on Charlie Angus's side here. That's the one silver lining 0.50

00:17:38.820 of this all. So Justin Trudeau yesterday made a claim that he meant to be an insult, but I kind

00:17:44.620 of think it backfired on him in the delivery. This is from the House of Commons.

00:17:50.080 Mr. Speaker, what we hear from the leader of the opposition is under the previous conservative

00:17:56.820 government, everything was perfect. And what he is proposing to do is to make Canada great again.

00:18:03.780 That is not what Canadians want.

00:18:06.600 He is pining for a nostalgia that, quite frankly, Canadians do not feel.

00:18:11.300 They remember what he did as part of Stephen Harper's failed housing minister.

00:18:16.620 He remembers the rights of Indigenous peoples violated, 1.00

00:18:22.340 the ignoring of environmental responsibilities,

00:18:25.520 and the lack of an environmental and economic plan for the future.

00:18:28.680 We're going to continue on.

00:18:29.720 yeah you got all the you got the trifecta there it was uh stephen harper government uh oblique

00:18:39.140 trump reference and then we're gonna you know be the ones that are securing uh better the future

00:18:44.880 opportunities for canada so we had the trifecta there blame harper blame trump and make some

00:18:49.520 vague platitude about the liberal government's willingness and ability to deliver now he butchered

00:18:55.380 the line there he was stumbling and fumbling as much as he was talking about a water bottle it's

00:18:59.120 the same he can't be uh it's a shame he uh he uh you know couldn't string out the one little bit

00:19:05.120 of a line and dialogue that he had trapped to try to prep for that i realize i flubbed my line when

00:19:10.160 i was accusing him of flubbing his so maybe it's something in the water but uh the point of this

00:19:14.560 that i i'm stressing here is that canadians are right now proving that they're kind of okay

00:19:20.120 with what polyev is putting out now obviously it's early there's a fair bit of vote parking

00:19:25.480 that happens when people get a call from a pollster and they kind of just say at that moment

00:19:29.580 in time what they want and maybe they don't vote that way when an election comes up. Realistically

00:19:34.620 we're probably about 18 months away from a national election but it's weird that Trump

00:19:42.000 comparisons have become the norm everywhere. I've said to people countless times before that stand-up 0.73

00:19:48.360 comedy has been killed in a lot of ways now because you have so many lazy hat comedians that

00:19:52.920 I don't know how to tell jokes or write jokes anymore. They just get up on stage and it's like,

00:19:56.460 oh, Donald Trump, am I right? And that's supposed to be in and of itself enough to bring the

00:20:00.340 audience on your side. And when people do this, it feeds into the political class. It feeds into

00:20:06.680 the political culture, which is where we see this unfolding now. So Trump and Trudeau have met

00:20:14.340 together. They have supposedly had good conversations, but Trudeau wants to turn around

00:20:18.800 and score political points off of Trump, who is going to be the Republican nominee. And in doing

00:20:25.300 so, he can then just try to link Polyev to Trump. So Doug Ford is Trump. Danielle Smith is Trump.

00:20:31.580 Pierre Polyev is Trump. Andrew Scheer was Trump. Everyone's going to be Trump. It doesn't really

00:20:34.960 matter. They don't even need to make the comparison stick. They just have to say it and they think

00:20:39.640 that's enough. So that's going to be like the lone liberal talking point that we get when we see the

00:20:46.600 next election, whenever that is. It's going to be Polyev equals Trump. And when you see him there

00:20:51.280 with his lovely family, talking about things that matter to Canadians, people are going to be like,

00:20:56.140 I don't know, maybe he's, maybe he's, I don't think he's, he's necessarily Trump-like. So

00:21:00.660 we have been promoting, to go back to how we started off this show, the positives of the oil

00:21:05.800 and gas sector. And one way we've done this is through this fantastic series that I've really

00:21:10.300 enjoyed called Unjust Transition, our inversion of Justin Trudeau and Jonathan Wilkinson's and

00:21:16.300 stephen gilbo's so-called just transition today is the last of the interviews we did with ceos

00:21:23.100 and executives from the energy sector to talk about the work they're doing and this one features

00:21:28.300 brian gould who is the ceo of aspen leaf energy so finishing off this wonderful series take a look

00:21:46.700 I'm joined now by Brian Gould of Aspenleaf Energy.

00:21:51.260 Brian, it's good to talk to you.

00:21:52.880 Just set this landscape here.

00:21:54.760 How does Aspenleaf fit into the Canadian energy sector?

00:21:58.340 Great.

00:21:58.820 So we are a private oil company started about 10 years ago.

00:22:04.860 Myself and three colleagues, former executives at Shell,

00:22:09.620 and we saw a business opportunity to acquire companies and assets in western canada primarily

00:22:18.200 alberta and produce uh crude oil so we produce 25 000 barrels a day like like crude oil now

00:22:26.520 and we started the company with a vision of not just being profitable for our investors but

00:22:34.700 we grew up with a mentality and a view of how a company should be run and so we're very passionate

00:22:41.160 about our culture commitment to working respectfully with our employees with the

00:22:48.180 communities which we operate being responsible in terms of environmental performance and we think

00:22:55.000 the all fit together under one umbrella which i call just strong corporate governance so what are

00:23:02.860 of the barriers for you that you're finding in the sector as an oil company that's obviously

00:23:07.360 successful, but is one of those giant players that tends to be the one that dominates the

00:23:11.540 discussion of the industry in Canada? I'd say probably access to capital and

00:23:20.100 investors, appetite would be the wrong word. We have investors that would like to stay invested

00:23:30.600 our company we're very profitable uh and yet the societal pressures on them to divest are

00:23:38.040 overwhelming and overpowering and so we're currently going through a frankly a restructuring

00:23:43.480 where some of our investors are going to be forced to divest uh despite rational economic performance

00:23:51.240 uh just to satisfy these what i'll call societal pressures i i mean it sounds like you're putting

00:23:57.400 a very charitable spin on it i mean these are very ideologically driven in many cases and i'm

00:24:01.880 wondering why that's stronger than clearly a market-based motivation to invest and to remain

00:24:08.040 investing if this is a sector that is doing as well as it is it's a great question uh all i can

00:24:15.160 tell you is i deal with managers of large like college endowment funds and they've been particularly

00:24:24.200 susceptible to these campaigns these orchestrated efforts yes and some of them are forced to divest

00:24:31.080 some of them are in a situation where they're not forced to divest their current holdings but they're

00:24:36.360 not allowed or permitted to invest in new opportunities and so i i put this all under

00:24:41.720 the umbrella of access to capital and the industry is frankly being starved of this access to capital

00:24:48.440 which is you know the like lifeblood of of a capital intensive industry and and yeah and i

00:24:52.920 I think that the important point here is that for capital, Canada is not in isolation here.

00:24:57.400 People can put their capital anywhere in the world. So if they're seeing an environment in

00:25:00.840 this country that doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle, then they are putting that money

00:25:06.120 elsewhere. They're still investing in it. It's just Canadian companies are not the beneficiaries

00:25:09.880 of it, right? Well, in part, it's Canadian companies. In part though, I would say it's

00:25:15.000 a global phenomenon. Many of our investors are based in the United States, for example,

00:25:21.720 and they simply can't invest in the sector, whether it's in Canada or elsewhere.

00:25:27.260 And the sad part of this for me is when I think about our investors,

00:25:30.960 you know, people think about, frankly, us guys, we're the fat cats and all this.

00:25:36.040 But the people that are invested in my company are pensions.

00:25:39.700 So I like to think of it, our profits pay pensions for retirees.

00:25:44.940 uh we have a very large investor who has a sizable medical institute i believe they funded

00:25:53.420 something like over 20 nobel prize when he was just in the field of medicine uh we fund a major

00:25:59.760 world famous art museum uh so so this isn't money going to you know fat cats smoking big cigars

00:26:07.000 uh i like to think of it that the profits from our industry are paying it forward to society

00:26:12.760 for education for retirement funds for medical research for medical treatment for the arts i

00:26:19.960 mean these are all i think causes that we all agree are are very worthwhile well and the people

00:26:25.960 you employ i mean that's the their lifeblood is this industry and when you hear the government

00:26:30.200 talk about this so-called just transition they're really imagining and i think saying as a an

00:26:36.040 inevitability that there is a future in which these people shouldn't have those jobs so that's

00:26:41.160 That's a great question. So, you know, although we're fairly modest in size,

00:26:45.960 when I look at our direct and indirect employment through, you know, contractors and such,

00:26:54.160 we probably employ about a thousand people. These are very high paying jobs. We have field

00:27:00.740 operators, many of whom, these are people without college educations. These are fantastic paying

00:27:07.080 jobs for them uh and and i it boggles my mind to think that in this transition that there will be

00:27:14.160 any kind of a placement for that kind of employment that quality of employment those number of jobs

00:27:19.560 in it and and i even hesitate to use the word just transition that's that's a fallacy well it's the

00:27:26.040 unjust i mean it's an unjust transition which is why we i've been using that language and and i

00:27:30.180 will always caveat it with the so-called and not just for alberta i mean when alberta is booming

00:27:34.860 this is attracting people from all across the country for those jobs 100 so this is of national

00:27:39.420 interest this is in calgary this is in alberta this is of national importance and i would argue

00:27:43.980 it's of importance to to the western more fully uh and then just so so i i'd like to challenge

00:27:50.540 two of your phrases please just and well they're not but let me clarify they're not my phrases

00:27:56.860 i'm quoting those ones but yes carry on so in my view there is nothing just about this

00:28:02.140 You know, I believe in a free open market economy, and if the broader economic forces decide that there's a better product than ours to supply energy, that's great, so be it.

00:28:15.220 But there's nothing just about an enforced transition.

00:28:20.200 And secondly, there is no transition.

00:28:22.260 uh so this is a complete pipe dream the fact the belief that the world will transition off of fossil

00:28:28.940 fuels in any rational time frame is a pipe dream i you know the stats i heard this morning i believe

00:28:35.360 that 84 percent of the world's energy still comes from fossil fuels uh after decades of transition

00:28:41.600 that's maybe down a couple of percent and there are six to seven billion people in this world

00:28:46.460 are fundamentally short of energy and the world will need all sources of energy, including fossil

00:28:52.480 fuels, in my view, for the foreseeable future. And when I say for the foreseeable future, I mean

00:28:58.480 decades and decades beyond that. So this concept that there will be a transition away from this

00:29:04.840 source of energy is frankly just a fairy tale. You've heard what they want to achieve. What

00:29:12.240 would the real world implications of that be on your company? Not just your industry,

00:29:15.980 your company and your employees? If they were to achieve what they want to achieve,

00:29:22.100 our company simply would not exist. We would not exist. We would not be supplying these thousand 0.94

00:29:28.780 jobs, the taxes we pay. We have in our short lifespan contributed well over a billion dollars

00:29:36.040 to the economy and that would all be gone. And I don't mean this in a negative way,

00:29:40.660 but that's as a smaller company. That's as a very small company. So multiply that by many

00:29:45.860 many orders of magnitude many factors when you think about the size and the breadth of the

00:29:49.960 industry uh so i believe we're fundamental to the canadian economy and how it manifests itself

00:29:56.160 it's everything from who pays for the social services that we all expect and what who pays

00:30:01.400 for medical care what happens to the value of the canadian dollar when we don't this you know oil

00:30:06.100 and gas is far and away our largest export uh good luck buying your fresh food and vegetables

00:30:10.720 with a 50 cent dollar so all of these things will cascade through the economy into ways that every

00:30:17.420 canadian will will relate to very directly this this will cause a reduction in our standard

00:30:23.620 of living full stop uh and not only that it will compromise our national security uh even and and

00:30:30.520 these are fundamental very fundamental issues and the reason i'm not passionate about this topic for

00:30:35.620 my company i'm passionate about these topics for our country well it's a very important note to end

00:30:42.200 on and for people who aren't in the industry i think they can share that as well certainly when

00:30:46.520 they hear it put how you have uh phrased it there so eloquently brian gould thank you very much

00:30:51.140 thanks for having me pleasure that was the last installment of our unjust transition series and i

00:30:58.860 have credited on the show the modern miracle network which does very good work in advocating

00:31:03.240 for the oil and gas sector in Canada for connecting me with all of those folks and it's fitting

00:31:09.280 although it was not anticipated before I saw this bill from Charlie Angus that we have on

00:31:13.580 Michael Binion who we started this series with and now we inadvertently get to end it with him

00:31:19.440 as well from the Modern Miracle Network. Michael it's always good to talk to you thanks for coming

00:31:24.000 on today. Glad to be here I'm actually down in in Houston and the NAEP show so big big oil and gas

00:31:30.820 conference and i've just managed to get out i don't think about the perfect quiet place but i'm

00:31:34.980 but i'm happy all right well we'll we'll take in the uh the sites of houston where i would

00:31:39.540 much rather be from a weather perspective right now i just did this bill that has been proposed

00:31:44.980 i mean it's bonkers and most private members bills don't get a a hearing and and are unlikely

00:31:50.580 to pass but but it reflects i think an attitude which is very pervasive among people that do have

00:31:57.460 tremendous influence here and i just wanted to get your take on this first i mean is this

00:32:01.860 have you ever heard of anything going after your industry as aggressively as this you know this

00:32:08.340 they've been signaling this idea for quite some time that somehow fossil fuels are similar to

00:32:13.220 cigarettes and of course this whole bill is patterned on the the you know the advertising

00:32:17.940 and warning labels and everything that has to go on on cigarettes on on the basis that i think that

00:32:22.740 There was back in the 70s or whenever there was, in fact, some cigarette companies that were caught doing some promotion of their product without maybe talking about some of the risks of their product.

00:32:33.600 So I think that's the analogy they're trying to create.

00:32:36.220 The problem that I have with this bill is one is the whole preamble is based not on mainstream science, like as the International Panel on Climate Change doesn't agree with almost everything in their preamble.

00:32:47.700 This is an extreme view of apocalyptic warnings about the possibility of climate change, which I don't, as I said, the mainstream science I don't think agrees with.

00:32:59.400 The other thing is fossil fuels have saved millions and millions, if not billions, of people and made everybody's life better.

00:33:06.760 It's net very positive for human health, as we've seen since we started using fossil fuels in the 1800s

00:33:13.720 and child mortality rates and longevity and health outcomes and equality.

00:33:18.860 All these things are literally miraculous in society.

00:33:22.860 And so that obviously is completely different than the cigarettes.

00:33:26.540 And then I guess to finalize it, I think if they were to go ahead with what they're saying,

00:33:30.160 to say you know you're not allowed to say that natural gas has less emissions than coal because

00:33:37.660 that would be promoting a fossil fuel well the environmental damage of not being able to pick

00:33:43.160 the best fuel and the best energy in its best place has been already well demonstrated for

00:33:48.100 example by our project in quebec where you know hundreds and you know thousands of megatons have

00:33:52.980 have you know would have been saved if only we'd been allowed to go ahead with a fuel that is that

00:33:58.260 has lower environmental impacts it's all it's like you said at the beginning it's bonkers

00:34:01.640 yeah and and i would point out as well when with that tobacco comparison that this bill doesn't go

00:34:06.820 after deceptive advertising could i be i'd be completely on board with some measured regulation

00:34:12.540 on deceptive or dishonest advertising this goes after truthful uh advertising and promotion of

00:34:18.720 the sector and and one that that i find particularly jarring especially for charlie angus who's from

00:34:23.780 Northern Ontario and should know Indigenous communities quite well, is that you cannot 1.00

00:34:28.120 even promote how these projects can benefit Indigenous people. And I've met through

00:34:34.000 introductions from you, Indigenous advocates for the energy sector that don't just support it as

00:34:39.220 a Canadian economic project, but specifically for Indigenous communities. And these people

00:34:43.860 could literally be jailed for having these same conversations publicly. I know. You know, I've

00:34:50.320 often said that the problem with the energy debate that we've had, and this is one of our

00:34:55.060 Modern Miracle Network messages, is we've been for too long comparing the benefits of one kind

00:35:00.540 of energy, alternatives, with the negative impacts of another kind of energy, fossil fuels. But what

00:35:06.660 about the benefits of fossil fuels, which literally are miraculous? And why are we not talking about

00:35:12.000 some of the impacts of alternatives, which are pretty large? And we're all of the above and put

00:35:18.160 best energy in its best place but we're also for a reasoned conversation on energy where we talk

00:35:23.200 about benefits and the impacts not just one or the other and and as you said this bill would say

00:35:29.280 we're going to make it illegal illegal to talk about the benefits of fossil fuels

00:35:35.040 yeah i mean i mean your entire initiative at modern miracle network is to promote the miracle

00:35:40.560 of hydrocarbon so so you're you and your board are getting thrown in the slammer when this bill

00:35:45.280 passes if it passes right well if we were to dare to advertise i guess it's yeah it's crazy right

00:35:50.320 it's it's crazy and so we're we're trying to promote i think a rational conversation not not

00:35:56.640 to ignore the impacts that fossil fuels are just the opposite we're we're big promoters of of

00:36:02.320 technology to to deal with the impacts of fossil fuels but we're just saying let's not throw out a

00:36:07.920 product that has created the miracle of modern society with you know without any thought or or

00:36:12.720 consideration and by the way as we're looking at you know the impacts of of alternatives in terms

00:36:18.640 of um landscape and i mean they're the worst energies there are in terms of land use and

00:36:25.200 materials use per gigajoule or kilowatt of energy and so you know there as i say wind and solar

00:36:31.380 you've got some work to do to really become a environmentally friendly energy and by the way

00:36:37.500 so do fossil fuels we've got a lot of work to do too so uh let's let's have that honest

00:36:42.160 conversation about the work that we need to do and let's have an honest conversation about the

00:36:46.160 benefits that are brought to people yeah and that's the thing i mean if you want to talk about

00:36:50.080 the negatives in your eyes fine with me but no one should be barred from discussing the positives as

00:36:55.320 well so uh well said i'll let you get back to your conference there michael but always good to

00:36:59.280 check in with you thank you so much for coming on yeah you bet all right michael binion executive

00:37:03.520 director and founder of the modern miracle network as i said a nice little cap off on our unjust

00:37:10.080 transition series and we'll put those all up on youtube so anytime you uh get an ndp candidate

00:37:14.640 knocking on your door and you want to uh perhaps share with them the stories that they want to

00:37:18.160 criminalize you can send a link to that maybe i'm going to be thrown in jail actually so i might need

00:37:22.800 to do like the ezra levant thing and set up like a free andrew uh website and go fund me campaign

00:37:27.840 for when i get you know thrown in the slammer for having a nice and a friendly interview with an oil

00:37:33.120 CEO, because heaven forbid we promote the positives of what is the lifeblood of the Canadian economy.

00:37:38.640 Well, that does it for us for today. If you haven't picked it up yet, we have a new show

00:37:43.300 on Fridays called Off the Record, featuring many weeks anyway, yours truly. So I'll be on tomorrow

00:37:49.320 alongside Candice Malcolm and Harrison Faulkner. That comes out at sometime on Friday. Just keep

00:37:54.180 watch all our shows. It's easier that way. You don't miss anything. With that, have a wonderful

00:37:58.680 weekend and we will see you all on Monday. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all.

00:38:03.920 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:38:06.620 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:38:33.120 We'll be right back.

00:39:03.120 We'll be right back.

Juno News - February 08, 2024

NDP MP wants to jail people for promoting oil and gas

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript