Juno News - Trudeau’s blatant anti-Western Canadian bias continues

00:00:00.000 Quebec has become the first jurisdiction in the world to ban oil and gas exploration and

00:00:04.640 development. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has approved a massive oil project in eastern

00:00:08.780 Canada, while at the same time they continue to block energy projects in western Canada.

00:00:13.520 What is with this blatant anti-western Canada bias? I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The

00:00:17.600 Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. So today I want to have

00:00:33.020 a broader discussion on the oil and gas industry, the energy industry in Canada, and to do so I am

00:00:38.580 joined by my friend Michael Binion. Binion is a seasoned entrepreneur with a history of starting

00:00:43.260 financing and managing companies primarily in the oil and gas sector. He's the president and

00:00:48.220 founding shareholder of Questair Energy, a public oil and gas company that has production operating

00:00:53.480 in Quebec. He's also the executive director of the Modern Miracle Network, whose mission is to

00:00:58.340 encourage Canadians to have a reasoned conversation about energy issues and that is sorely needed in

00:01:03.920 this country. So Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's great to be here and it's great to see you again, Candice.

00:01:09.020 So in mid-April, the Quebec government announced that citizens, this is a story from CTV, citizens

00:01:15.460 officially win a fight to ban oil and gas development in Quebec. Quebec to become the first jurisdiction

00:01:20.460 in the world to explicitly ban oil and gas development in its territory after decades of

00:01:25.160 campaigning by environmental organizations and citizen groups. The newly adopted law will end

00:01:29.920 petroleum exploration and production, as well as public financing of those activities in Quebec. So

00:01:35.900 this is pretty drastic, Michael. What does this mean for our country? What does it mean

00:01:39.980 for you and your operations with Questair? And what can we take from this new law that's been imposed?

00:01:46.900 Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot to unpack in that in that question. So, you know, first, first of all,

00:01:52.780 I think that, you know, we should we should be concerned as Ukraine makes us consider reconsider

00:01:59.900 Canada's role in the world. And I don't think that's true for all for people like yourself and others. I don't think any

00:02:05.560 of us didn't think that we shouldn't have been reconsidering far before now. But it's certainly

00:02:11.020 I think making people in the federal government reconsider our role in the world. I think it's

00:02:14.360 making a lot of Canadians think maybe our role in the world should change. And so as as most of us start

00:02:20.760 to realize that we really need to be thinking about being a place the world can count on as a supplier of

00:02:28.220 last resort in effect for resources, when when, when, when, when rogue states or or kleptocratic

00:02:35.980 states are letting us down that the world knows they can count on Canada, right. And, and it's

00:02:42.460 discouraging for me that even with that context that that decided to continue on and go the opposite

00:02:47.980 direction, and really basically tell Germany and Europe that, you know, your solution for having

00:02:55.600 built too many windmills is you should build more windmills, and we're not going to do anything to

00:02:59.920 help you. So I find that just discouraging as a Canadian, that Quebec moved that way. You know,

00:03:05.840 I, I, I also think that, that it's, it's, it's discouraging as well from the point of view of that it,

00:03:15.360 it went against a big move that's happening in the oil and gas industry right now on technology.

00:03:20.960 And I think contrary or very unexpectedly, oil and gas is, is racing to low and zero emissions and

00:03:31.520 has a really good chance. And I'm, and I'm, I've called it that we will in fact, get to zero or near

00:03:37.840 zero or net zero, whatever you want to call it, we'll get there before wind and solar. And so it's

00:03:42.080 also discouraging that as Canada is emerging as this technological leader in low emissions,

00:03:46.720 oil and gas energy, like potentially lower emissions and wind and solar, even that we have,

00:03:51.920 we have a province that says, not only are we going to ban you from doing your zero emissions

00:03:57.360 project, we won't even let you pilot it to prove if it works. It's, it's really unbelievable. I mean,

00:04:03.120 when you think about the significant reserves that exist in Quebec, somewhere between 250 billion

00:04:09.600 and 1000 billion, I guess, a trillion cubic meters, according to the Financial Post, I mean,

00:04:15.280 they're sitting on what could potentially be a huge boon to our economy, to their own resource

00:04:20.880 economy, talking about allowing people who live up north, more economic opportunities, more First

00:04:25.760 Nations jobs. And, and, and to your point, I mean, you wrote that the Quebec bill will do nothing to

00:04:31.520 lower emissions. It's hard to wrap your head around why people in Quebec are so stubbornly opposed to

00:04:40.160 petroleum or carbon, you know, products. I mean, you spent a lot of time in Quebec, I know you,

00:04:47.920 you speak French, and you talk to a lot of people in Quebec, I know the sentiment exists across the whole

00:04:52.800 country, particularly on the political left, they just don't want and they don't want oil period.

00:04:59.360 How can we how can we move beyond that conversation and start talking more about some of the things you

00:05:03.920 just mentioned? And maybe you can elaborate a little bit on the new technologies that are allowing

00:05:08.320 oil and gas exploration development to get closer to carbon zero?

00:05:13.040 Yeah, well, first of all, I should start that, you know, the quote that you made from that CTD

00:05:16.160 article I felt was, or I think it was, it was, I'm not sure if it was CTD or RDI, but they talked

00:05:21.840 about it, that citizens had won this thing. That's just pure propaganda, right? Like, I don't have an

00:05:27.120 issue with the people of Quebec. The people of Quebec are 75% in favour of my project. Less, less than 15%

00:05:34.880 Quebecers are against it, with, you know, another 10 to 15 undecided. So this is not, this is an issue of

00:05:41.680 political elites, and, and I would say also entrenched interests, who don't want competition from lower

00:05:49.120 emissions, cheaper energy, that this is entrenched interests and political elites that are, that are,

00:05:54.240 that are, you know, virtue signaling that we're, you know, we're the first place in the world to ban

00:05:58.720 oil and gas, over, and, and, but over, over against their own people, right? So I think that's one 0.63

00:06:06.480 thing I wanted to say that I don't think that the people of Quebec are, have, have some cultural

00:06:11.520 difference, that they don't also like jobs, they don't also like to do better, that they don't also

00:06:15.840 want to help Ukraine and Germany, for example, right? So I think that's one thing I would just say

00:06:20.400 that, and that polling has been repeated over and over and over, like for years, and also in the last

00:06:26.240 year, as the government was contemplating this ban, Main Street did a poll, Leger's done two polls,

00:06:31.680 um, I think Agnes, Angus Reid did a poll, I'm pretty sure it was Agnes Reid, and it was different

00:06:37.840 pollsters over a period of time have consistently shown that a majority of Quebecers are in favor of

00:06:42.960 developing their own resources and their own natural gas. So, um, anyways, that's, that's a key

00:06:47.920 point. The, um, the other thing, just as you said about the size of it, just to confirm that, like

00:06:52.320 the Quebec, uh, the Quebec discovery, the natural gas discovery that we have there,

00:06:57.840 we could replace 50% of Russian exports to Germany. We could, it could be 10% of North American LNG

00:07:05.760 exports. It, it, it is, it would make Quebec self-sufficient in gas. It's a massive game changer

00:07:12.080 type of, uh, and, and, and of course, because it's so big, it, it does have disruptive elements.

00:07:17.760 That's why I say, I think there are, there certainly are, you know, people in, entrenched

00:07:21.920 interests in Quebec that are, you know, not, not everybody will be, uh, affected positively.

00:07:26.240 So that gets to sort of some of your thinking of like, why are Quebecers against us? I, I don't

00:07:30.480 think that the average person on the street, the average person on the street is, um,

00:07:36.480 I don't know, can I just, maybe I'll just go, because I think that your real question was about

00:07:39.920 the technology, right? So if I can just head into that. Yeah, let's, let's talk about the tech and what,

00:07:43.920 what makes it so, so clean and what's changed? Yeah. So I started looking at this a while ago

00:07:49.120 and partly it's because in Quebec, we, you know, we are, we got a ban or a, it was a temporary

00:07:54.800 moratorium on fracking and, you know, it's to do with, it was basically to do environmental studies.

00:08:00.720 So we went through 134 independent studies. It was as, as, as an overall comprehensive study,

00:08:06.640 it took three years in Quebec, mostly came and said that industry was telling the truth all along.

00:08:11.600 And I was, I was really encouraged to hear, um, that independent francophone PhDs, professors,

00:08:19.200 researchers, basically were true scientists. They just went and got the data and they wrote

00:08:24.480 the reports and told the truth. And of course, these are the types of studies that tend not to

00:08:28.720 get reported in the news. And these are the types of professors and researchers who don't tend to want

00:08:33.520 to be in the news. They don't have an agenda. They just interested in science, right? So those studies

00:08:37.920 exist. They've been there for a few years. Um, and, and, but what we did understand was that,

00:08:43.600 you know, maybe due to misinformation or not misinformation, but that there was a demand

00:08:47.920 in the population to say, we want to see lower impacts. We are worried because we've been told

00:08:52.000 to work. We're worried about emissions and, and, and, you know, quite frankly, so am I. So that's not,

00:08:57.760 we're worried about noise. I get that. We're worried about our water being contaminated. We're worried.

00:09:02.560 Um, so, so I said, well, okay, that's fair. What, what if we could bring those all to zero? Like,

00:09:09.600 is it, so it was sort of this idea instead of this is the way we do it now, this is business as usual.

00:09:14.400 How do I improve on what we do now? I said, let's start at this aspirational, theoretical,

00:09:20.400 impossible to achieve goal, develop a project with zero impacts. Well, the interesting thing about

00:09:26.000 that is that it caused me to just really relook at the way we do things in our industry. And in doing

00:09:32.320 that, we did come up with, let's produce all the gas, but let's use the local hydroelectricity.

00:09:38.240 That cut 80% of our emissions. And then we said, well, what about if we just install modern SCADA,

00:09:44.640 modern, you know, AI is having an impact on, on us being able to stop methane leaks and things like

00:09:50.240 that. Modern, modern, better machine valves, all this, you know, that, that cuts another 15% out.

00:09:58.160 And then the last 5% of our emissions are, you know, mostly what people could refer to as fugitive

00:10:03.280 emissions and so on and so forth. So we can get almost all of those with vapor cap vapor capture

00:10:09.440 systems. Right. So that, so that was the first thing we did. And, and then that was three years

00:10:14.240 ago. And we proposed that and the environmentalists immediately said to us like immediately, oh, no,

00:10:19.520 no production's not the problem. It's the consumption of your product. That's a problem. And I said, well,

00:10:24.560 thanks for letting me know that because for the last 10 years, you've been telling me that I was

00:10:27.520 the problem, right? The minute I go to zero emissions, you tell me I was never the problem.

00:10:31.440 So, uh, okay. Thanks for that. So for the last three years, I've been looking at the consumption.

00:10:35.600 How do we make consumption of natural gas, zero emissions, which of course everybody says,

00:10:39.120 well, that's impossible, right? Well, I thought producing it was zero was impossible, but it wasn't.

00:10:44.880 And we did things differently. The, the consumption side, what, what we've now discovered through

00:10:51.520 different technologies and I was in high tech before I was an oil and gas. So it's an area of

00:10:55.280 interest for me. Um, there are now, I've now come up to found dozens of technologies, dozens,

00:11:01.440 where you can take CO2 capture it from a flu stack or an industrial process or from, you know, a power

00:11:09.280 plant or wherever, and you can take that CO2 and, and convert it using just organic chemistry, all well

00:11:16.720 understood organic chemistry, by the way, nobody's just, you know, nobody's inventing a cure for cancer

00:11:20.880 here, right? It's, uh, just organic chemistry. You can take that CO2 compound, combine it with,

00:11:27.200 you know, H2O and, and other compounds. There's dozens and dozens of products you can make out of

00:11:32.320 that. And a lot of them are expensive. You know, like, I think some of them will be like, you know,

00:11:36.640 you'd need $500 a ton for the CO2 to make it pay, but there are cement additives that you can make

00:11:43.200 from CO2. So this is like basically in a, in a plant, right? Put this, bring the CO2 into a plant,

00:11:48.320 out of, out of the plant comes cement additives. And those technologies are borderline economic

00:11:54.160 with a zero price on carbon. Um, there's, there's others that I think with, uh, lower prices, you

00:12:00.240 know, they would, they would need some sort of, uh, price to be, um, economic and, um, but, but,

00:12:07.040 that got me excited, right? I said, if, if there's going to be a hundred dollar price or,

00:12:11.440 and Trudeau is now talking about $200, $250 total price on carbon, so many of these technologies

00:12:16.560 are, are economic. And, and then the idea of capturing it and just storing it on our ground

00:12:21.280 is economic. So I looked at it and said, well, if we do what we did, like all the,

00:12:26.800 let's think about the three Rs, right? If we apply all the things I was talking to you about

00:12:30.960 efficiencies that could make our productions, that's called the reduce, the reduce element.

00:12:35.520 That's just new technologies and efficiencies. Uh, the res, uh, recycle or reuse. So take that,

00:12:42.400 capture that CO2, recycle it, reuse it, turn it into a feedstock for, uh, products,

00:12:47.280 industrial products, consumer products, and then three, return it, our return,

00:12:51.920 the third R being return it under the ground. So our project in Quebec, for example,

00:12:57.040 was an industrial hub. So we were eight, 10 kilometers from industrial hub. What we had to

00:13:01.760 do was to put an extra CO2 line into the pipeline. So we put the gas line, a water line, and now we're

00:13:07.600 going to also put a CO2 line. We, we needed to do some extra compression, um, to be able to move that CO2

00:13:16.400 and to store it underground. And we, we were going to sell the gas that we produced with near zero emissions

00:13:22.240 to the industrial hub, industrial users there, um, have them capture and return us the CO2 through that

00:13:30.480 CO2 return line, and then have some of that CO2 that's captured used right there in that industrial

00:13:35.280 part to make things like cement additives. And so we were going to create, which to my knowledge,

00:13:40.800 if we had done it, um, would have been the world's first zero emissions production and, and consumption

00:13:47.120 of natural gas. We gave all that materials to the government and, and they have, you know, they elected

00:13:53.760 instead to go with the, we want to be the first in the world to ban oil and gas. But why would you ban it

00:13:58.880 if it's zero emissions? Like it's, it would be lower impact than wind and solar. Why would you ban it?

00:14:04.080 Well, I mean, you, you kind of answered the question there with the moving goalposts,

00:14:07.520 right? You, you, you found a way to, uh, extract it as zero emissions and then they changed the,

00:14:12.800 they changed the, the plans that, no, no, no, you have to do it, uh, consumption. So, uh, that,

00:14:18.320 that's part of the problem I suppose with working with, uh, environmental activists is that they

00:14:22.640 don't actually want to find a solution. They just want their way. It seems my, I just, I have a

00:14:28.400 question because from my understanding of Canadian federalism, uh, natural resources are federal

00:14:34.800 jurisdiction, not provincial. And I, I, I wanted to ask you about how, how legally they can, they can

00:14:40.080 do something like this, uh, whether a conservative government could do anything if a conservative

00:14:44.560 government were elected federally, if they could do anything to override this.

00:14:47.280 Oh yeah. Right. Cause that's where you said federal, but you meant it's provincial, right?

00:14:51.040 Resources are provincial resources is what you meant to say. Right. Yeah. So, yeah. So I mean,

00:14:56.080 what can the federal government do there? Well, I, I think, I think the only thing the federal

00:14:59.200 government can really do is to, is, is to do what they do in other areas like health is to encourage,

00:15:06.960 um, encourage, uh, cooperation with a national health strategy or a national health policy.

00:15:14.160 They can encourage that through their, through funding. Right. And I think they could also

00:15:18.000 encourage, um, cooperation with a national energy policy in a similar way, but, but at the end of

00:15:25.120 the day, uh, health is run by the provinces and at the end of the day, resources are run by the

00:15:30.000 provinces. So, you know, they obviously have the final decision, but there, but the federal government

00:15:34.240 certainly has strong, um, core, uh, powers of, uh, persuasion to, uh, help have people say, well,

00:15:41.040 well, manage and run your own resources how you want, but please try to cooperate with this

00:15:46.080 national policy, uh, that Canada's role in the world is to, is to be the provider of last resort,

00:15:53.600 to be that one place in the world, the world that people can count on in when there's an emergency,

00:15:58.880 like there is, or a crisis like there is today. Well, I, I wanted to ask you about the equalization

00:16:04.240 formula because Western provinces, as you know, distribute billions of dollars towards Quebec every

00:16:08.880 year. Fairness Alberta, uh, estimates that Quebec receives approximately 13 billion, uh, per year.

00:16:14.480 Um, you, you know, evidently the provinces that contribute to the equalization fund or that they

00:16:20.000 give more to the federal government than they get back are all energy producing, oil and gas producing

00:16:24.400 provinces. Whereas we talked about Quebec sits on a reserve, uh, that isn't. So I'm wondering, uh,

00:16:29.360 what your thoughts are on incorporating, um, untapped energy reserves into the equalization formula.

00:16:34.720 Yeah. That's, that's always been a thing. I mean, Pauline Marois, when she was premier,

00:16:39.360 um, said explicitly, why would we develop our, uh, resources? It just reduces our equalization.

00:16:45.760 Um, and what, what, what, the way she put it, of course, because she was actually prone to oil, 0.76

00:16:50.400 actually, but the way she puts it, well, we should separate first and then we should develop it

00:16:54.400 so that we don't end up, we don't end up having our oil and gas, um, go back to the rest of the country.

00:17:00.160 So in the formula, you know, it's a point you've made, I've written papers on this, or I guess op-eds

00:17:04.800 to be more fair, um, that the 50% of the resource revenue in effect would be clawed back through the

00:17:12.960 equalization formula. So Quebec would only keep 50% of their resource revenues. Um, you know, when the

00:17:18.880 Legault government was, uh, running or elected their, their, their, uh, one of their campaign

00:17:24.240 platforms was, uh, points was to get Quebec off equalization. Um, and I, I think those are popular

00:17:31.200 things to say and think, but pragmatically, I think, you know, I think we've, we've seen the

00:17:35.520 equalization just continues to go up for Quebec. And of course, developing these resources for sure

00:17:41.040 would make the, you know, even in full development, I think we looked at it, it might get, it would get

00:17:47.360 Quebec off a material amount of equalization, not all of it, but it would be very material. But in effect,

00:17:53.360 you know, not all that money goes to Quebec. Some of that money would come to Canada. Right.

00:17:56.480 Interesting. Uh, I want to change gears a little bit. We're talking about the feds and,

00:18:01.440 you know, generally speaking, I think a lot of Western Canadians look at Justin Trudeau and think

00:18:05.280 of his government as being anti-energy, anti-development, uh, blocking pipelines,

00:18:09.200 banning, uh, tanker ships off the West coast, making it more, more, more difficult. Um, I know that

00:18:13.680 there was that, I think it was bill 69, um, that, that required, you know, gender analysis when it came 0.95

00:18:18.800 to development projects. And it didn't seem like this government was ever going to approve an oil and gas

00:18:22.960 gas project. But lo and behold, uh, we saw that, that, that the Trudeau government approved the Beta

00:18:27.120 Nord project out in Newfoundland and Labrador off the coast. It'll include some offshore drilling,

00:18:31.760 approximately 300 million barrels of oil. It's expected to create thousands of jobs for Canadian

00:18:36.960 and generate approximately $3.5 billion in government revenue. Uh, so I w I want to hear your

00:18:42.800 thoughts on this project. It seems like it's good news that the Trudeau government is moving forth

00:18:46.960 with this program. Um, but what do you say to people who still feel frustrated, uh, the,

00:18:52.240 the feeling that projects are being strangled in Western Canada at the same time?

00:18:55.840 Yeah. So a couple of things, first of all, uh, the government did, uh, did ultimately approve

00:19:02.320 and in fact, even financed, you know, after they chased Kinder Morgan out of the country,

00:19:07.120 um, with their, with their constant changes to the rules, uh, they then stepped up and actually even

00:19:13.360 approved. And then of course got forced to finance it. And a lot of people say, I mean,

00:19:17.360 every time I have people say, well, Oh, look at this, the federal government's, uh, is actually

00:19:21.360 even paying for your pipeline. Why are you guys complaining? I'm like, you don't get it. None

00:19:24.880 of us wanted that, right? No, nobody wanted the government to make the rules so bad that no

00:19:29.920 private sector company could ever build a pipeline. And so that the government then had to pay for it out

00:19:34.800 of our tax dollars. Like that's absolutely like, it just infuriates me to hear people say that

00:19:39.440 because nobody out here wanted the government to pay for it. We just wanted them to go,

00:19:43.760 to be fair and have it approved. Um, so, but they did approve that process. I think one of the big,

00:19:49.280 one of the worst things that the government did on the, basically the first week of being elected

00:19:53.680 was canceled gateway pipeline. This is, um, this is an unbelievably, you want to talk about Canada

00:19:59.520 stepping up in the world and, you know, being that country that, you know, like I, my feeling right now

00:20:05.600 is it's an opportunity for Canada to go up a weight class. We've, we've, we've been our entire existence,

00:20:10.880 the junior partner to Britain or to United States or to United Nations and peacekeeping. We've been

00:20:16.880 a junior partner punching above our weight. We've been so proud of that. Um, more recently,

00:20:21.200 I just see us being a junior partner punching below our weight. Like we're just not, we're,

00:20:25.040 we're floundering as a country, but we have this opportunity now, I think to go up a full weight

00:20:28.720 class. Like we could be, we could be senior partners, uh, face to face with America, Europe,

00:20:35.040 Asia saying, we're the place that you can count on. And we expect to be treated with that kind

00:20:39.920 of respect. And by the way, it will pay for you to give us that kind of respect because we are the

00:20:44.560 ones that will keep you going when there's a war. Right. Um, so, but gateway is the, the port of

00:20:50.480 Prince Rupert, a full day closer to Asia than Vancouver. Um, not, not super busy, populated,

00:20:56.800 beautiful city like Vancouver. I mean, this is a relatively underpopulated place. Uh, we, we should

00:21:03.360 have our national defense there for the Arctic. It's the closest port to the Arctic. We, we should

00:21:08.400 have a map, you know, massive port there for that, uh, major ports there for bringing goods in from

00:21:13.520 Asia, but also sending resources out, highways, power lines, everything. It's just, it's a, it's a,

00:21:19.200 it's a very, um, visionary project. The Prince Rupert is a, is a, is a natural wonder for Canada,

00:21:26.400 actually, if you spend some time looking at that kid and Matt Prince Rupert area.

00:21:30.400 But the other thing that was terrible about canceling that project is that there was close

00:21:34.640 to 40 first nations that had signed on to something so like 30 had signed 40 in the

00:21:39.920 middle of negotiations for benefits agreements. These are abjectly poor, uh, people in the north

00:21:46.320 of British Columbia and Alberta, and they had a chance to be lifted out of poverty. And instead,

00:21:51.840 we condemn them to another generation of poverty. It's just, to me, it's, and by the way, it was done

00:21:56.720 without so much as a phone call. Like you talk about first nations should be consulted. Well,

00:22:01.280 when you take away somebody's future, how do you not at least call them at a very minimal level of

00:22:08.000 consultation? I mean, I've met so many chiefs up there who were just so dejected and discouraged

00:22:13.840 and, and, and felt absolutely powerless that their government wouldn't even call them to say,

00:22:19.120 look, we're sorry, nothing. It was just horrible. And, and, and there are first nations kids not

00:22:25.040 even born and we already know what their life's going to be like. It's horrible. I think this has

00:22:28.400 been one to your point about a government that's been anti-resource. They've been really anti first

00:22:33.360 nations too in, in, in terms of ending on reserve poverty. So, uh, I got a little bit off topic of

00:22:39.600 your question, the discrimination there. I, I do think that there has been a strong discrimination

00:22:44.640 against resources. Generally, we saw that with Pierre Trudeau too. Uh, there's this idea. Um,

00:22:50.640 and it's been popularized since Pierre Trudeau in the 1950s sixties that, um, you know, we really

00:22:56.880 should stop hewing wood and drawing water as, uh, to make our living like for our, for our America,

00:23:01.600 you know, for America, for Americans and other people. Um, and we should join the modern economy

00:23:06.480 in the, in the sixties, it was manufacturing. Um, what that led to was a branch plant economy,

00:23:11.840 but at least branch plant economies come with real jobs, you know, union jobs, right? Uh,

00:23:16.080 the current idea is that Canada is going to, um, get away from primary production,

00:23:21.360 hewing wood, drawing water, and we're going to become a high tech country. But I tell you,

00:23:27.040 being a branch plant economy, when, you know, to, to the Googles and alphabets and, or I guess that's

00:23:32.720 the same place, uh, apples and, and, uh, Amazons of the world, like they, they, we won't even create 1.00

00:23:39.440 the union jobs this time. We'll become a branch plant economy. So, you know, somebody will create

00:23:44.000 a tech company, three people will get rich, a bunch of employees will work for a couple of years and

00:23:48.480 then get fired, right? As soon as Amazon takes them out or whatever. So this is, this is a really

00:23:54.400 dangerous industrial policy. It's a seductive idea. We're going to do technology, right? Between that,

00:23:59.760 by the way, we were going to do services. The end of the world, at the end of the day though,

00:24:04.720 if you look at it, what, what should a country do in a competitive world is we should do what

00:24:10.880 we're best at. You know, we should let other people do what they're best at. I mean, Canada

00:24:15.440 should not become, try to become a world leader in precision machine parts. We should not try to become

00:24:19.840 a world leader in mass manufacturing of t-shirts. We should not, I don't think we should try to become

00:24:24.640 a world leader in, um, in, in mass manufacturing at all, right? The, the, what we're the world's best at

00:24:31.520 is primary resources. And what's wrong with drawing water and hewing wood, if you're the world's best

00:24:36.640 at it, what's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. And, and by the way, the technology

00:24:41.520 involved to do that in today's world, it is one of the most, as I said, I started in tech. I work in

00:24:46.320 oil and gas. Now it is higher. It is, I deal with more technology. It's a higher tech industry than the

00:24:52.240 high tech industry is. If you can believe that, like when I was doing high tech startups, it was one,

00:24:57.120 I was dealing with one technology or one in, in oil and gas, I'm dealing with hundreds of

00:25:01.920 technologies and they're all amazing. And by the way, you don't get to zero, you can't get to these

00:25:06.080 zero emissions ideas without that new technology. That's this new carbon tech is going to be

00:25:11.200 incredible. That rambled around a little bit. Um, but I, I, I, I think that the government has been

00:25:18.640 anti-resource. I do think Ukraine is causing to rethink things. We are seeing some positive signs, 0.98

00:25:24.960 but, but there's been some horrible mistakes made in the early part of their term. I think

00:25:28.800 there's some, there's really some serious glimmers of hope in their most recent pronouncements that

00:25:34.320 they're getting it, that they're getting Canada should be the best. We should do it. We're the

00:25:37.840 best in the world. If only because the rest of the world needs us to do it.

00:25:40.960 Right. And, and if anything, I think that the, the lesson the world needs to learn from Germany and 0.86

00:25:47.120 their failed green energy policies is it has created a huge dependency on Russian gas. And, and, and that's

00:25:54.080 part of the fueling of this conflict. And it's so obvious that you can draw a straight connection

00:25:58.320 between, uh, you know, Putin's tanks and, uh, Germany's green energy policy. So it's, it's really,

00:26:04.720 I guess, good that, that the Trudeau government is, is really that I have final question for you,

00:26:08.800 Michael, you wrote an op-ed here at True North, uh, where you, you talked about how Canada takes a

00:26:13.200 very myopic approach to energy. And we sort of see it as two very black and white options, either

00:26:18.640 business as usual, kind of neglect the environment and just do what we can to make money or on the

00:26:24.720 alternative, completely banning oil and gas, which is seems like that's the route that folks in, in

00:26:30.080 government in Quebec and many environmentalists want to take, uh, you instead suggest and discuss

00:26:34.960 what you call the third option. I was wondering if you could just elaborate on what that looks like

00:26:39.600 and, and how you can see Canada sort of balancing these two sort of traditional opposing, uh, ideals.

00:26:45.760 Yeah. Well, I'm really hoping that this, that, that one, you know, out of, out of, out of a crisis,

00:26:50.480 sometimes, you know, silver linings or good things emerge. I'm hoping that what it might emerge is

00:26:56.320 what I think is a 21st century approach to energy and environment. And I, and I think where we're

00:27:01.040 locked into is a 1900s or 20th century idea. I think in the late 1900s, there was this idea that

00:27:08.240 continuous growth could not be sustained and that, um, and so therefore we had to make a choice

00:27:14.720 between business as usual, which we knew was going to make, uh, you know, like make, make the

00:27:20.640 environment, um, for some people think to a serious crisis that we wouldn't even be able to live in

00:27:26.560 it, but, but definitely hurt the environment or our other option was to, was to go along the, well,

00:27:31.360 let's ban oil and gas. And it's just going to mean you have to learn to live with less and that,

00:27:35.600 you know, like, like some of the weffers say, you know, you're, you're not going to own anything

00:27:38.880 and you're going to be happy about it. So, but that, but that to me is a, it was, uh, was a 19,

00:27:44.240 1900, late 1900s, 20th century approach. And we've just locked ourselves into that business as usual

00:27:50.080 or, uh, and, and, and you, by the way, using the technology of the end of the 20th century,

00:27:55.040 um, that probably was correct. There's probably truth to that. It's just, it's the technology.

00:27:59.760 And as I was describing earlier, the technology has advanced, has advanced and is advancing very

00:28:05.120 quickly. Here's another thing that people make, you know, get stuck into that sort of 20th century

00:28:09.520 idea. They also sort of seem to have this idea that oil and gas technology is static and it's

00:28:14.480 only wind and solar who, whose technology is advancing, but the, but it's the opposite. There's,

00:28:20.960 there's enormous amounts more money being invested in research and development in oil and gas than

00:28:25.440 there is in wind and solar. The industry is way bigger. Uh, the number, you know, number of patents,

00:28:30.400 number of everything. It's all a lot more. So that that's a, another false idea that oil and gas

00:28:35.440 technology is static. So we have this sort of thing about let's compare what wind and solar will be

00:28:39.920 with 2050 technology to what oil and gas was with 1999 technology. And, oh, I guess, isn't it the,

00:28:46.880 isn't the answer obvious. So the, so what I guess I'm really saying on this third option is that

00:28:53.120 application of new carbon tech, which is that what I went through the idea of being able to reduce through efficiencies, uh,

00:29:00.400 cycle or return under the ground, our carbon emissions that we can do that. You know, looking

00:29:07.440 at the example of Europe, at least, at least, you know, with what we know today, we can do that

00:29:12.320 cheaper than trying to roll out, uh, wind with today's technology and today's batteries. It would

00:29:18.000 be cheaper for us to, so I'm calling that that's not, that's not do a transition from one energy to

00:29:22.800 another. Let's keep all of our energies, including wind and solar, but let's transform

00:29:28.960 oil and gas into zero emissions energy or low emissions energy. And that, and an energy

00:29:33.200 transformation is a third option on climate, as opposed to the, you know, what I, what I mean.

00:29:40.160 The other thing I say, I just said that the environmentalists of the last century, they,

00:29:44.720 thank you. You did a great job. You, you, you did the alarm bell. There's going to be 10 billion

00:29:48.640 people. It's going to create environmental challenges. Thank you for waking us up to that.

00:29:53.280 But you haven't had a new idea in 50 years besides ban and block. So retire and let a new generation 1.00

00:29:59.600 of environmentalists who are solutions oriented, technology oriented, let them take over and let's

00:30:05.280 solve the problem from the, with private market solutions.

00:30:08.880 Oh, that sounds great. I, I, I like to hear that there is a new generation of, of environmental

00:30:13.760 thinkers that aren't as doom and gloom as the one that get marched out in front of the media. People

00:30:18.320 like Greta Thunberg, who just basically, you know, her, her job is to complain and to look angry and, and not 1.00

00:30:24.800 really be productive in the conversation anyway. So it's good to hear that there are people out there

00:30:29.200 making reasonable cases and that the technology is really speaking for itself. So Michael Binion, I

00:30:35.760 appreciate your time. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. It's always great to hear from

00:30:39.120 you. Yeah, it was fun. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much. I'm

00:30:42.640 Candice Malcolm and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

Juno News - May 05, 2022

Trudeau’s blatant anti-Western Canadian bias continues

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript