00:08:57.220here is what oil and gas is to the Canadian economy.
00:09:01.080So he is literally, by definition, criminalizing the other side of the bait.
00:09:07.100He does not want anyone to be able to put forward a position that is in contradiction
00:09:11.060with the position he has, which is oil and gas equals evil, bad, scary.
00:09:15.380So this is literally, I mean, this is tin pot dictatorship nonsense here.
00:09:19.800When you say that no one should have the legal right to debate you, to debate your position,
00:09:24.900no one should have the right to disagree with you publicly.
00:09:27.580That's what Charlie Angus is saying there, and he is being absolutely unequivocal about it.
00:09:33.960So 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.
00:09:51.080And I kind of just had a moment where I was distracting myself from work today.
00:09:55.200So I tried to do something that didn't feel like work, but I could justify as being work.
00:09:59.120And I use, there's this website called, well, it's a service called Mid Journey, which you
00:13:58.660So 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.
00:14:12.160And you can be literally sent to jail.
00:21:58.820So we are a private oil company started about 10 years ago.
00:22:04.860Myself and three colleagues, former executives at Shell,
00:22:09.620and we saw a business opportunity to acquire companies and assets in western canada primarily
00:22:18.200alberta and produce uh crude oil so we produce 25 000 barrels a day like like crude oil now
00:22:26.520and we started the company with a vision of not just being profitable for our investors but
00:22:34.700we grew up with a mentality and a view of how a company should be run and so we're very passionate
00:22:41.160about our culture commitment to working respectfully with our employees with the
00:22:48.180communities which we operate being responsible in terms of environmental performance and we think
00:22:55.000the all fit together under one umbrella which i call just strong corporate governance so what are
00:23:02.860of the barriers for you that you're finding in the sector as an oil company that's obviously
00:23:07.360successful, but is one of those giant players that tends to be the one that dominates the
00:23:11.540discussion of the industry in Canada? I'd say probably access to capital and
00:23:20.100investors, appetite would be the wrong word. We have investors that would like to stay invested
00:23:30.600our company we're very profitable uh and yet the societal pressures on them to divest are
00:23:38.040overwhelming and overpowering and so we're currently going through a frankly a restructuring
00:23:43.480where some of our investors are going to be forced to divest uh despite rational economic performance
00:23:51.240uh just to satisfy these what i'll call societal pressures i i mean it sounds like you're putting
00:23:57.400a very charitable spin on it i mean these are very ideologically driven in many cases and i'm
00:24:01.880wondering why that's stronger than clearly a market-based motivation to invest and to remain
00:24:08.040investing if this is a sector that is doing as well as it is it's a great question uh all i can
00:24:15.160tell you is i deal with managers of large like college endowment funds and they've been particularly
00:24:24.200susceptible to these campaigns these orchestrated efforts yes and some of them are forced to divest
00:24:31.080some of them are in a situation where they're not forced to divest their current holdings but they're
00:24:36.360not allowed or permitted to invest in new opportunities and so i i put this all under
00:24:41.720the umbrella of access to capital and the industry is frankly being starved of this access to capital
00:24:48.440which is you know the like lifeblood of of a capital intensive industry and and yeah and i
00:24:52.920I think that the important point here is that for capital, Canada is not in isolation here.
00:24:57.400People can put their capital anywhere in the world. So if they're seeing an environment in
00:25:00.840this country that doesn't seem like it's worth the hassle, then they are putting that money
00:25:06.120elsewhere. They're still investing in it. It's just Canadian companies are not the beneficiaries
00:25:09.880of it, right? Well, in part, it's Canadian companies. In part though, I would say it's
00:25:15.000a global phenomenon. Many of our investors are based in the United States, for example,
00:25:21.720and they simply can't invest in the sector, whether it's in Canada or elsewhere.
00:25:27.260And the sad part of this for me is when I think about our investors,
00:25:30.960you know, people think about, frankly, us guys, we're the fat cats and all this.
00:25:36.040But the people that are invested in my company are pensions.
00:25:39.700So I like to think of it, our profits pay pensions for retirees.
00:25:44.940uh we have a very large investor who has a sizable medical institute i believe they funded
00:25:53.420something like over 20 nobel prize when he was just in the field of medicine uh we fund a major
00:25:59.760world famous art museum uh so so this isn't money going to you know fat cats smoking big cigars
00:26:07.000uh i like to think of it that the profits from our industry are paying it forward to society
00:26:12.760for education for retirement funds for medical research for medical treatment for the arts i
00:26:19.960mean these are all i think causes that we all agree are are very worthwhile well and the people
00:26:25.960you employ i mean that's the their lifeblood is this industry and when you hear the government
00:26:30.200talk about this so-called just transition they're really imagining and i think saying as a an
00:26:36.040inevitability that there is a future in which these people shouldn't have those jobs so that's
00:26:41.160That's a great question. So, you know, although we're fairly modest in size,
00:26:45.960when I look at our direct and indirect employment through, you know, contractors and such,
00:26:54.160we probably employ about a thousand people. These are very high paying jobs. We have field
00:27:00.740operators, many of whom, these are people without college educations. These are fantastic paying
00:27:07.080jobs for them uh and and i it boggles my mind to think that in this transition that there will be
00:27:14.160any kind of a placement for that kind of employment that quality of employment those number of jobs
00:27:19.560in it and and i even hesitate to use the word just transition that's that's a fallacy well it's the
00:27:26.040unjust i mean it's an unjust transition which is why we i've been using that language and and i
00:27:30.180will always caveat it with the so-called and not just for alberta i mean when alberta is booming
00:27:34.860this is attracting people from all across the country for those jobs 100 so this is of national
00:27:39.420interest this is in calgary this is in alberta this is of national importance and i would argue
00:27:43.980it's of importance to to the western more fully uh and then just so so i i'd like to challenge
00:27:50.540two of your phrases please just and well they're not but let me clarify they're not my phrases
00:27:56.860i'm quoting those ones but yes carry on so in my view there is nothing just about this
00:28:02.140You 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.
00:28:15.220But there's nothing just about an enforced transition.
00:28:22.260uh so this is a complete pipe dream the fact the belief that the world will transition off of fossil
00:28:28.940fuels in any rational time frame is a pipe dream i you know the stats i heard this morning i believe
00:28:35.360that 84 percent of the world's energy still comes from fossil fuels uh after decades of transition
00:28:41.600that's maybe down a couple of percent and there are six to seven billion people in this world
00:28:46.460are fundamentally short of energy and the world will need all sources of energy, including fossil
00:28:52.480fuels, in my view, for the foreseeable future. And when I say for the foreseeable future, I mean
00:28:58.480decades and decades beyond that. So this concept that there will be a transition away from this
00:29:04.840source of energy is frankly just a fairy tale. You've heard what they want to achieve. What
00:29:12.240would the real world implications of that be on your company? Not just your industry,
00:29:15.980your company and your employees? If they were to achieve what they want to achieve,
00:29:22.100our company simply would not exist. We would not exist. We would not be supplying these thousand
00:29:28.780jobs, the taxes we pay. We have in our short lifespan contributed well over a billion dollars
00:29:36.040to the economy and that would all be gone. And I don't mean this in a negative way,
00:29:40.660but that's as a smaller company. That's as a very small company. So multiply that by many
00:29:45.860many orders of magnitude many factors when you think about the size and the breadth of the
00:29:49.960industry uh so i believe we're fundamental to the canadian economy and how it manifests itself
00:29:56.160it's everything from who pays for the social services that we all expect and what who pays
00:30:01.400for medical care what happens to the value of the canadian dollar when we don't this you know oil
00:30:06.100and gas is far and away our largest export uh good luck buying your fresh food and vegetables
00:30:10.720with a 50 cent dollar so all of these things will cascade through the economy into ways that every
00:30:17.420canadian will will relate to very directly this this will cause a reduction in our standard
00:30:23.620of living full stop uh and not only that it will compromise our national security uh even and and
00:30:30.520these are fundamental very fundamental issues and the reason i'm not passionate about this topic for
00:30:35.620my company i'm passionate about these topics for our country well it's a very important note to end
00:30:42.200on and for people who aren't in the industry i think they can share that as well certainly when
00:30:46.520they hear it put how you have uh phrased it there so eloquently brian gould thank you very much
00:30:51.140thanks for having me pleasure that was the last installment of our unjust transition series and i
00:30:58.860have credited on the show the modern miracle network which does very good work in advocating
00:31:03.240for the oil and gas sector in Canada for connecting me with all of those folks and it's fitting
00:31:09.280although it was not anticipated before I saw this bill from Charlie Angus that we have on
00:31:13.580Michael Binion who we started this series with and now we inadvertently get to end it with him
00:31:19.440as well from the Modern Miracle Network. Michael it's always good to talk to you thanks for coming
00:31:24.000on today. Glad to be here I'm actually down in in Houston and the NAEP show so big big oil and gas
00:31:30.820conference and i've just managed to get out i don't think about the perfect quiet place but i'm
00:31:34.980but i'm happy all right well we'll we'll take in the uh the sites of houston where i would
00:31:39.540much rather be from a weather perspective right now i just did this bill that has been proposed
00:31:44.980i mean it's bonkers and most private members bills don't get a a hearing and and are unlikely
00:31:50.580to pass but but it reflects i think an attitude which is very pervasive among people that do have
00:31:57.460tremendous influence here and i just wanted to get your take on this first i mean is this
00:32:01.860have you ever heard of anything going after your industry as aggressively as this you know this
00:32:08.340they've been signaling this idea for quite some time that somehow fossil fuels are similar to
00:32:13.220cigarettes and of course this whole bill is patterned on the the you know the advertising
00:32:17.940and warning labels and everything that has to go on on cigarettes on on the basis that i think that
00:32:22.740There 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.
00:32:33.600So I think that's the analogy they're trying to create.
00:32:36.220The 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.
00:32:47.700This 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.
00:32:59.400The other thing is fossil fuels have saved millions and millions, if not billions, of people and made everybody's life better.
00:33:06.760It's net very positive for human health, as we've seen since we started using fossil fuels in the 1800s
00:33:13.720and child mortality rates and longevity and health outcomes and equality.
00:33:18.860All these things are literally miraculous in society.
00:33:22.860And so that obviously is completely different than the cigarettes.
00:33:26.540And then I guess to finalize it, I think if they were to go ahead with what they're saying,
00:33:30.160to say you know you're not allowed to say that natural gas has less emissions than coal because
00:33:37.660that would be promoting a fossil fuel well the environmental damage of not being able to pick
00:33:43.160the best fuel and the best energy in its best place has been already well demonstrated for
00:33:48.100example by our project in quebec where you know hundreds and you know thousands of megatons have
00:33:52.980have you know would have been saved if only we'd been allowed to go ahead with a fuel that is that
00:33:58.260has lower environmental impacts it's all it's like you said at the beginning it's bonkers
00:34:01.640yeah and and i would point out as well when with that tobacco comparison that this bill doesn't go
00:34:06.820after deceptive advertising could i be i'd be completely on board with some measured regulation
00:34:12.540on deceptive or dishonest advertising this goes after truthful uh advertising and promotion of
00:34:18.720the sector and and one that that i find particularly jarring especially for charlie angus who's from
00:34:23.780Northern Ontario and should know Indigenous communities quite well, is that you cannot
00:34:28.120even promote how these projects can benefit Indigenous people. And I've met through
00:34:34.000introductions from you, Indigenous advocates for the energy sector that don't just support it as
00:34:39.220a Canadian economic project, but specifically for Indigenous communities. And these people
00:34:43.860could literally be jailed for having these same conversations publicly. I know. You know, I've
00:34:50.320often said that the problem with the energy debate that we've had, and this is one of our
00:34:55.060Modern Miracle Network messages, is we've been for too long comparing the benefits of one kind
00:35:00.540of energy, alternatives, with the negative impacts of another kind of energy, fossil fuels. But what
00:35:06.660about the benefits of fossil fuels, which literally are miraculous? And why are we not talking about
00:35:12.000some of the impacts of alternatives, which are pretty large? And we're all of the above and put
00:35:18.160best energy in its best place but we're also for a reasoned conversation on energy where we talk
00:35:23.200about benefits and the impacts not just one or the other and and as you said this bill would say
00:35:29.280we're going to make it illegal illegal to talk about the benefits of fossil fuels
00:35:35.040yeah i mean i mean your entire initiative at modern miracle network is to promote the miracle
00:35:40.560of hydrocarbon so so you're you and your board are getting thrown in the slammer when this bill
00:35:45.280passes if it passes right well if we were to dare to advertise i guess it's yeah it's crazy right
00:35:50.320it's it's crazy and so we're we're trying to promote i think a rational conversation not not
00:35:56.640to ignore the impacts that fossil fuels are just the opposite we're we're big promoters of of
00:36:02.320technology to to deal with the impacts of fossil fuels but we're just saying let's not throw out a
00:36:07.920product that has created the miracle of modern society with you know without any thought or or
00:36:12.720consideration and by the way as we're looking at you know the impacts of of alternatives in terms
00:36:18.640of um landscape and i mean they're the worst energies there are in terms of land use and
00:36:25.200materials use per gigajoule or kilowatt of energy and so you know there as i say wind and solar
00:36:31.380you've got some work to do to really become a environmentally friendly energy and by the way
00:36:37.500so do fossil fuels we've got a lot of work to do too so uh let's let's have that honest
00:36:42.160conversation about the work that we need to do and let's have an honest conversation about the
00:36:46.160benefits that are brought to people yeah and that's the thing i mean if you want to talk about
00:36:50.080the negatives in your eyes fine with me but no one should be barred from discussing the positives as
00:36:55.320well so uh well said i'll let you get back to your conference there michael but always good to
00:36:59.280check in with you thank you so much for coming on yeah you bet all right michael binion executive
00:37:03.520director and founder of the modern miracle network as i said a nice little cap off on our unjust
00:37:10.080transition series and we'll put those all up on youtube so anytime you uh get an ndp candidate
00:37:14.640knocking on your door and you want to uh perhaps share with them the stories that they want to
00:37:18.160criminalize you can send a link to that maybe i'm going to be thrown in jail actually so i might need
00:37:22.800to do like the ezra levant thing and set up like a free andrew uh website and go fund me campaign
00:37:27.840for when i get you know thrown in the slammer for having a nice and a friendly interview with an oil
00:37:33.120CEO, because heaven forbid we promote the positives of what is the lifeblood of the Canadian economy.
00:37:38.640Well, that does it for us for today. If you haven't picked it up yet, we have a new show
00:37:43.300on Fridays called Off the Record, featuring many weeks anyway, yours truly. So I'll be on tomorrow
00:37:49.320alongside Candice Malcolm and Harrison Faulkner. That comes out at sometime on Friday. Just keep
00:37:54.180watch all our shows. It's easier that way. You don't miss anything. With that, have a wonderful
00:37:58.680weekend and we will see you all on Monday. Thank you. God bless and good day to you all.
00:38:03.920Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:38:06.620Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.