Juno News - The fight of our lives

Candice Candice Malala Malala is the co-founder of the True North Initiative, a group dedicated to fighting climate change and championing clean, affordable, and sustainable energy. In this episode, Candice talks about the need for a pipeline from Alberta's oil sands to the rest of the country, and why she believes the pipeline should be built.

00:00:00.000 Canada is an energy producing superpower. We produce more than four million barrels of oil

00:00:06.060 per day. We use the world's most sophisticated techniques and procedures, many of them developed

00:00:11.380 right here in Canada. And we have the world's strongest and most comprehensive environmental

00:00:17.100 framework. We have the world's third largest proven reserves of fossil fuels. And unlike

00:00:22.680 most oil producing countries in the world, Canada is a Western liberal democracy. We have freedom,

00:00:29.200 opportunity, and equal rights for all. We should be the world's leader in responsible development

00:00:35.360 of fossil fuels. We should be setting an example of how a hydrocarbon industry should be run.

00:00:41.680 But Canada has a problem, and it's a political problem. We simply refuse to do what's in our own

00:00:48.200 best interest. We allow special interest groups and lobbyists to set the agenda. We let foreign 1.00

00:00:54.560 funded activists sabotage our industry. We let radical ideological fringe people dictate the

00:01:02.880 public policies and influence our way of life. We ignore the hardworking Canadian families, 1.00

00:01:09.120 especially the folks who work in the natural resource industry, the backbone of our economy,

00:01:14.160 the industry that developed our entire country. Nine percent of the entire Canadian labor force,

00:01:18.800 but 1.7 million Canadians are directly or indirectly employed through Canada's natural

00:01:24.240 resources industry. These folks are ignored, they're taken for granted, and they're often even

00:01:28.960 demonized. In Canada, we punish ourselves with punitive and regressive taxes that make life less

00:01:35.040 affordable. We kill infrastructure projects that would create good-paying jobs and make our energy 0.72

00:01:40.800 more affordable. Canada produces more oil than we can consume, but we can't get any pipelines built

00:01:46.960 to get our products to market. On one side of the country, we lose billions because we're forced to

00:01:52.560 export our oil at a loss. And then on the other side of the country, we spend billions because we

00:01:58.240 import foreign oil from countries that are actually willing to produce and ship their petroleum products.

00:02:04.560 And so where's the leadership? Where are the people who are capable of addressing these important

00:02:09.760 and high-level issues and the ones that are leading our country into the future? At a time like this,

00:02:15.280 we really do need real leadership, someone who understands Canada's vital interests, someone

00:02:20.160 who can guide us as a world leader and as an energy superpower. But we don't have that. We have an

00:02:26.720 environment minister who says this. But let's be clear, climate change has huge costs now. I have no

00:02:32.240 time for folks who are like, you know, we shouldn't take action. What do you mean you have no time?

00:02:37.680 You've got to have time. Your job is to have time for folks that care about this issue and want to

00:02:42.560 understand it. But no, I don't have time for politicians that play cynical games about climate

00:02:48.160 action. We have a prime minister who says this. We can't shut down the oil sands tomorrow. We need to

00:02:56.000 phase them out. We need to manage the transition off of our dependence on fossil fuels. That is going to

00:03:01.600 take time. And in the meantime, we have to manage that transition. Now, Trudeau is just a pretty face.

00:03:07.120 He said himself that he sees his role as symbolic. So who's really running our country? Well, this is

00:03:13.520 Trudeau's best friend and his top advisors. Liberal members of parliament jokingly call him the prime

00:03:20.080 minister. And here's what he thinks about pipeline politics. Truth be told, we don't think there ought

00:03:26.080 to be a carbon-based energy industry by the middle of this century. That's our policy in Canada, and it's

00:03:31.200 our policy all over the world. You can choose to fight this fight on locking us into a high carbon

00:03:36.560 economy for five decades. And I think that's a very reasonable perspective to take. In fact, it's

00:03:44.480 one we do take. So we don't think that we think that the oil sands have been expanded too rapidly

00:03:52.240 without a serious plan for environmental remediation in the first place. So that's why we don't think

00:03:58.160 it's up to us to decide whether there should be another another route for a pipeline, because the real

00:04:04.000 alternative is not an alternative route. It's an alternative economy. If this picture doesn't make sense

00:04:10.720 to you, well, don't worry, you're not alone. You're one of millions of Canadians that want decisions made

00:04:16.160 based on the national interest, making sure that Canadians have good paying jobs, reliable access to

00:04:22.320 affordable energy, and that Canada remains the world leader in environmental protection and safety.

00:04:29.360 This is the fight of our lives. Join us on our campaign for energy security. For the True

00:04:35.440 North Initiative, I'm Candice Malcolm.

Juno News - June 07, 2018

The fight of our lives

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