The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - June 05, 2019


Supporting Canada’s energy sector

Topics
energy investments and pipeline approvals regulatory environment
Hosted by
Jamie Schmal
Mentioned
Andrew Scheer Kinder Morgan Jamie Schmael Bill C-63 Ted Falk Brian Pallister Gateway Trudeau
Spring 2019 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada Standing up for Canadian farmers

Episode Stats


Length

17 minutes

Words per minute

164.82

Word count

2,926

Sentence count

170

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Member of Parliament for Provence, Manitoba, Ted Falk joins us to talk about Canadian energy and the future of the energy sector under the current government. We talk about the challenges facing energy development in Canada, and the potential benefits of Canadian energy development.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You're listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:07.340 The cost of living keeps going up, deficits keep going up,
00:00:11.120 and he has to raise taxes to pay for his out-of-control spending.
00:00:15.880 Talk is cheap, except when this finance minister does it.
00:00:19.220 It's very expensive.
00:00:21.980 It's the fact that he punished two strong women for doing the right thing 0.99
00:00:26.500 while he moved hell and high water to protect his buddies at SNC-Lavalin
00:00:31.580 from facing a day in court.
00:00:37.120 This is The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:00:40.120 I'm your host, Jamie Schmail, Member of Parliament for Halliburton-Corp
00:00:43.060 with the Lake Sprock in Ontario, and today's topic is Canadian energy.
00:00:47.500 Welcome, Ted Falk, Member of Parliament for Provence in Manitoba.
00:00:51.260 Thank you so much for joining us here today to talk about Canadian energy.
00:00:54.580 So good of you to give up your time.
00:00:56.500 And you're also Deputy Critic for?
00:00:59.500 Employment, Workforce Development, and Labour.
00:01:01.520 That is a long title, but well-deserved.
00:01:04.320 Well-deserved.
00:01:05.120 But you also sit on the Natural Resources Committee,
00:01:07.700 and you're deeply involved in that.
00:01:10.220 So maybe just give us a quick update on where you see,
00:01:15.760 I guess, the future of energy in Canada going.
00:01:19.500 You know, there's a lot of trouble getting pipelines built right now.
00:01:22.440 We're seeing troubles with the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
00:01:26.760 Northern Gateway was cancelled.
00:01:29.220 Energy East was cancelled.
00:01:31.560 So we're having a serious problem attracting investment here in Canada.
00:01:36.920 So maybe you can kind of give us a lay of the land, if you will, as to where we are.
00:01:41.660 Well, right now, as an energy sector in Canada, I think we're struggling with the lack of approvals
00:01:49.720 for a lot of major resource development projects that have been on the books in Canada for a long time.
00:01:55.760 And we've seen many investors pull their money out of Canada.
00:01:58.600 Close to $100 billion of investment has fled Canada in the last three and a half years.
00:02:04.840 And that is a dismal, dismal story for Canadians.
00:02:09.220 And it also speaks very poorly of the current government that we have
00:02:11.880 and how desperately we need to replace that government.
00:02:14.780 And our leader, Andrew Scheer, has put forward a platform on energy,
00:02:18.380 which includes an energy corridor, which is very exciting.
00:02:21.560 And we can talk a little bit more about that.
00:02:23.860 Yeah, why don't you basically explain what that is for those that have not heard it?
00:02:28.680 Of course, as you mentioned, our leader, Andrew Scheer, is putting out a platform idea every week.
00:02:34.560 And one was about the energy corridor and how Canadian energy can play a huge role
00:02:40.300 in tackling climate change, in reducing emissions,
00:02:44.020 and how we can be a world leader with our research, our technology, our innovation.
00:02:48.620 The energy development and resource companies that we have in Canada are world-class companies
00:02:54.880 and produce the lowest carbon print in their particular demographics
00:02:59.820 as far as the industries that are involved with it.
00:03:01.680 We have very responsible resource companies here,
00:03:04.620 and they've been kind of sidelined under this current government.
00:03:07.880 And I think they're looking forward to a change because our leader has indicated
00:03:10.420 that he is going to make a pathway for these folks to continue to do what they do for Canadians,
00:03:16.140 but also to continue to have access to the global market or to, again, give them access to the global market,
00:03:21.840 which is something they haven't enjoyed in the last few years.
00:03:24.280 And so part of that is East-West Energy Corridor,
00:03:28.480 which will be a space right across Canada designated for energy resource shipping from coast to coast,
00:03:36.040 that we can access tidewater with things like oil and natural gas and hydro.
00:03:40.560 Of course, hydro wouldn't go to the tidewater, but for hydro.
00:03:45.140 And the reason I mention hydro is because just yesterday Premier Brian Pallister was in Ottawa
00:03:50.220 to talk to Prime Minister Trudeau about the Manitoba-Minnesota transmission line
00:03:55.960 that has already received NEB approval but is not being green-lighted by the Liberal government.
00:04:02.160 And this is some of the most cleanest, greenest energy that we produce here in Canada,
00:04:08.000 and this current government is just stalling Manitoba's efforts to sell this energy to our southern neighbour.
00:04:15.120 Now, just for a bit of context, usually the federal government gets involved when projects,
00:04:19.660 massive infrastructure projects like a pipeline, like an electricity corridor, you name it,
00:04:25.100 when they cross provincial boundaries.
00:04:27.480 So that's why we're waiting for this federal nod, if you will.
00:04:33.140 And part, and I'm actually glad you mentioned this in the energy corridor
00:04:36.740 because I think it got overlooked in a number of media reports,
00:04:41.360 was the hydro part, the electricity part, and how that can benefit different provinces
00:04:46.740 as they transition to different forms of energy, such as Alberta, which is now phasing out coal,
00:04:52.280 while they can use some of the green energy from neighbouring provinces.
00:04:55.900 Yeah, exactly. And we know that hydro energy, which is what Manitoba produces,
00:05:00.480 is amongst the cleanest in the world.
00:05:02.960 Atomic energy is clean, solar energy is clean, wind energy is clean.
00:05:06.720 Very environmentally friendly sources of energy that we have here in Canada.
00:05:10.660 And what we do is we need to have a corridor that will move that energy across our country
00:05:15.780 so that Canadians rely on Canadian energy and not on foreign energy.
00:05:20.020 And that's very important.
00:05:21.780 And so part of Mr. Scheer's six-point plan for pipeline development, exactly,
00:05:27.840 would be to cancel the carbon tax, repeal Bill C-69.
00:05:34.000 That's the No More Pipelines Bill.
00:05:35.240 The No More Pipelines Bill.
00:05:36.860 And end the BC shipping ban, which would enable tankers to pick up our crude.
00:05:40.560 Establish timelines for approval.
00:05:43.880 Eliminate foreign interference in the approval process, 1.00
00:05:46.320 which is something that Bill C-69 actually exasperates further than it is today.
00:05:51.000 And then invoke federal jurisdiction when necessary to make sure that energy projects
00:05:54.720 and proposals can move along in a timely fashion.
00:05:56.820 Maybe we should point out and remind people that the shipping ban,
00:06:00.040 it doesn't actually ban tankers from foreign countries coming in to the coast.
00:06:04.880 It just bans Alberta energy from leaving that coast.
00:06:08.760 Right. It's landlocking our energy is what it is doing.
00:06:12.400 So even if Bill C-69, the No More Pipelines Bill, were to pass,
00:06:15.980 we still have to deal with the tanker ban, which we're still in the same predicament.
00:06:20.100 We are. It's a hand-in-glove kind of situation where we need both components
00:06:26.180 to make our energy sector viable as far as shipping our energy coming from Alberta to markets in Asia.
00:06:34.580 We need not only the pipelines to be constructed or approved, constructed and built,
00:06:40.220 but we also need the shipping ban to be lifted so that we can actually move this energy across the water to Asian markets.
00:06:46.800 Another important point to realize is that the shipping ban does not apply to the Atlantic provinces.
00:06:52.900 It's just British Columbia.
00:06:54.060 It is just a British Columbia thing, yeah.
00:06:56.860 It's very unfortunate, and we know that on the eastern side of Canada,
00:07:02.700 they're getting oil from countries that we don't think operate in environmentally or ethically responsible manners.
00:07:10.120 Countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, those types of countries are where we're buying our oil from right now,
00:07:16.080 and we're bringing it right down to St. Lawrence in ships,
00:07:20.880 and yet we're not this shipping ban that the Liberals have put in place prevents it from moving along the West Coast.
00:07:29.160 So we're talking about using Canadian workers to develop Canadian energy, Canadian technology, Canadian innovation,
00:07:37.600 good-paying, highly-skilled jobs right here at home,
00:07:40.940 and allowing us the ability to get that energy to international markets to use the actual marketplace to push the bad actors to up their game.
00:07:52.100 Absolutely, and once we have better access to international markets,
00:07:55.300 we know that our friends and neighbors to the south are also going to be willing to pay world prices for our energy products,
00:08:01.500 which currently we sell to them at a significant discount, and they do that because they can.
00:08:07.180 Yeah, we have no other customer than the United States right now,
00:08:09.800 so they are enjoying buying our oil for discounted prices, and that is not helping the industry one bit.
00:08:17.720 Not at all, no.
00:08:19.180 I find it very interesting that this past week, even the Green Party agrees with our leader, Andrew Scheer,
00:08:24.420 that Canadians should be enjoying Canadian energy.
00:08:27.260 I would agree with that.
00:08:28.000 And supporting the whole concept of using our Canadian energy resources to drive our Canadian economy,
00:08:35.680 and to wean ourselves off of foreign energy, foreign oil,
00:08:40.560 and so they support our leaders' initiatives in that area as well.
00:08:45.000 But also think about the other countries that are developing their industrial base,
00:08:52.620 that are developing their middle class, as that starts to grow,
00:08:56.140 and as people start to get more in tune to how energy is developed, extracted, you name it,
00:09:04.520 how people will all of a sudden a light bulb will come on and say,
00:09:07.700 you know what, maybe we don't want our oil from Venezuela or Nicaragua.
00:09:13.980 Maybe we do want it from a leader like Canada,
00:09:17.820 which has the highest energy or environmental and labor standards in the world.
00:09:22.280 Maybe we should be getting our product there.
00:09:24.920 And I think that sends a great message that we can then take those good ideas,
00:09:30.220 bring them to other countries, and up their game,
00:09:33.800 allowing us all to be better global partners.
00:09:36.860 Absolutely, and I think Canadians understand that.
00:09:39.980 I think that they want to source their energy from companies
00:09:44.180 that operate in an environmentally, socially responsible manner,
00:09:48.600 with high ethical standards, but also very high safety standards
00:09:52.940 and environmental standards.
00:09:55.280 And they know that Canadian companies operate that way
00:09:57.660 because that's the regime that we have for resource companies here in Canada.
00:10:02.480 It's something that allows them to extract our natural resources
00:10:06.060 and still do it in a competitive way, but do it in an environmentally friendly way.
00:10:12.100 And that's important to Canadians.
00:10:13.240 And when we get to the point where we will wean ourselves off of foreign oil 0.96
00:10:17.980 having to be transported across the water into our country,
00:10:22.000 which already has adequate resources to sustain our own energy needs,
00:10:25.980 we're also going to reduce the carbon print by reducing shipping of that oil.
00:10:29.580 And, you know, carbon is something that's very important to people today.
00:10:33.700 They're very sensitive to that.
00:10:35.760 And I think this is an area that we can point out,
00:10:37.880 hey, listen, we can actually, by developing our own resources with this energy corridor,
00:10:42.440 we can move our own oil right across our country from coast to coast,
00:10:46.180 eliminating the need to have it shipped across the Atlantic,
00:10:49.960 either from the south or from the east.
00:10:52.380 Well, I think you mentioned a bit about this,
00:10:54.280 and I'd like to maybe focus in on this.
00:10:56.760 When you talk about investment leaving the country,
00:11:01.920 I don't think people get a, you know,
00:11:04.300 you hear that and you're not sure how impactful it is.
00:11:08.680 But if you think about it, when the Liberals formed governments in 2015,
00:11:15.660 there were three major energy sector companies doing business in Canada.
00:11:22.080 By that, I mean building pipelines.
00:11:23.720 Northern Gateway, Energy East, and Trans Mountain.
00:11:26.360 Now we have zero.
00:11:29.000 Now, then if the investment dollars into the energy sector start to leave,
00:11:34.020 as you mentioned, hundreds of billions of dollars,
00:11:38.540 what happens after that, not only are the spinoff jobs,
00:11:41.580 but the brain drain that happens after that.
00:11:43.780 All that talent starts to leave this country.
00:11:48.300 And how is that good?
00:11:50.780 There's a whole ripple effect that I don't think people have been seeing yet.
00:11:54.660 I think you're 100% correct, Jamie.
00:11:57.760 When the work leaves, the brains leave as well.
00:12:00.140 The brains follow.
00:12:01.620 And we saw $4.5 billion of taxpayers' money
00:12:06.040 head down to Kinder Morgan shareholders in the United States and Texas in particular.
00:12:12.880 And that money has left our economy.
00:12:15.920 It's taken with it certainly some of the brain drain.
00:12:20.820 I think more is to come if the investment does not come back.
00:12:24.760 Yeah.
00:12:25.260 And, you know, Canadians are looking at this whole TMX fiasco and saying,
00:12:30.240 well, why would we use $4.5 billion to buy an existing pipeline
00:12:33.140 that shareholders were completely happy to operate in the first place,
00:12:35.480 which on the books is only worth $1.5 billion?
00:12:39.400 We then paid them, in addition to that $1.5 billion,
00:12:43.060 we paid them an extra billion dollars for the investment they had made
00:12:46.340 in trying to get to an approval process with the NEB.
00:12:49.120 And so now we're sitting at $2.5 billion.
00:12:52.980 And Canadian taxpayers are asking themselves,
00:12:55.140 where is that $2 billion, the difference between the $2.5 billion for hard costs
00:12:59.920 and the $4.5 billion that we actually paid for the whole entire project?
00:13:04.020 And you know what?
00:13:05.000 It's in the pockets of shareholders in Texas.
00:13:07.260 Maybe we can just remind listeners how we got to that point.
00:13:11.420 As you mentioned, the shareholders of Kinder Morgan
00:13:13.880 were more than happy to put their own money into this project,
00:13:18.040 not requiring one taxpayer dollar.
00:13:21.760 But they just felt there was no way forward under this current government,
00:13:26.740 the way they are bringing in pieces of legislation that hurt their industry
00:13:30.620 and hurt their chances of actually seeing a light at the end of their tunnel
00:13:35.000 in the approval process on getting the Trans Mountain pipeline built.
00:13:39.100 Correct.
00:13:40.100 The TMX pipeline is and was a viable pipeline.
00:13:44.780 The shareholders recognize that,
00:13:46.080 and that's why they made the initial investment through Kinder Morgan to purchase the pipeline.
00:13:50.480 They have operated it very successfully.
00:13:52.960 As most corporations, they saw continued opportunity in Canada
00:13:56.620 to develop our natural resource sector and the oil sands in northern Alberta.
00:14:01.300 And in order to do that, they needed a conduit to transport that oil
00:14:05.760 from the resource into the marketplace.
00:14:08.540 And the absolute best conduit that the industry recognizes is a pipeline.
00:14:12.680 So they made an application to go forward with a pipeline expansion,
00:14:16.860 which is what the TMX stands for, Trans Mountain Expansion.
00:14:21.140 And we're waiting for approvals,
00:14:23.160 and this government has made it so difficult that they were unable to get approval.
00:14:26.300 Had they gotten the approval, they would have invested close to another $10 billion
00:14:31.480 into our natural resource sector here in Canada.
00:14:35.140 And years of skilled trades employment.
00:14:37.020 And the brains would have stayed here.
00:14:38.980 The engineers would have stayed here.
00:14:40.740 The corporate managers would have stayed here.
00:14:42.680 And it would have created hundreds of thousands of jobs and opportunities,
00:14:47.860 especially for our indigenous communities.
00:14:49.540 They would have been by far the biggest benefactors
00:14:52.160 of a continued growing Kinder Morgan presence in Canada.
00:14:57.340 So while we're here, we only have a little bit longer,
00:15:00.200 but let's talk about your business, Guy.
00:15:02.340 You're watching this happening.
00:15:05.120 You're looking at the dollars in your business.
00:15:08.700 How do you see Canada in competition with other countries?
00:15:13.940 How competitive are we in the overall environment?
00:15:16.760 You know, I think something that all Canadian businessmen think,
00:15:19.280 and I think it's no different in the resource sector, is the burden of regulation.
00:15:23.860 And approval process is just part of it.
00:15:26.600 But ongoing regulation and a regulatory environment that makes it hard and difficult
00:15:31.280 to do business in Canada will actually chase money away from the Canadian marketplace.
00:15:37.880 It will chase money away from our natural resources. 0.94
00:15:39.780 And, you know, what I think the Trans Mountain people wanted through Kinder Morgan is 1.00
00:15:46.460 they wanted a government to provide a framework for them to do their business
00:15:50.560 and then get out of the way. 0.98
00:15:52.720 And when governments don't do that, they don't provide the correct regulatory environment
00:15:58.720 so that responsible, good stewardship can happen,
00:16:03.040 whether it's in resource development or in any corporate business.
00:16:06.440 But when that framework is missing, there's a lot of ambiguity that corporations and businesses feel
00:16:12.240 they're not willing to invest any further dollars into a situation like that,
00:16:17.420 not knowing when that may change.
00:16:18.800 But when there's a proper regulatory environment in place, it gives business...
00:16:22.620 And sometimes bad policy is not much worse than good policy
00:16:26.620 because at least business people know what the policy is.
00:16:30.520 But when there's an absence of certainty, when there's an absence of certainty
00:16:36.120 in what the regulatory environment will be, money will flee.
00:16:40.340 And business just wants to know what's the regulatory regime going to be.
00:16:45.380 We'll make it happen.
00:16:46.240 Just let us know what the rules of the games are going to be.
00:16:49.800 We'll play by the rules, but then get out of the way.
00:16:52.460 Yeah, know the rules up front.
00:16:53.920 Don't change it midway through the process like happened in Energy East.
00:16:57.740 And that's exactly right.
00:16:58.860 And once we know what the rules are, we'll play by the rules,
00:17:01.340 but then government needs to step aside.
00:17:03.120 Absolutely.
00:17:03.640 Well, thank you so much, Ted Falk from Provence.
00:17:06.080 Thank you so much for joining us today on The Blueprint.
00:17:08.740 It was great chatting with you.
00:17:10.180 We'll have to have you back and we can chat some more about
00:17:12.400 overall business environment here in Canada.
00:17:14.620 Absolutely.
00:17:15.060 Thank you for having me, Jamie.
00:17:15.820 Thank you very much.
00:17:16.580 This is The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:17:19.140 I'm your host, Jamie Schmale, Member of Parliament for Halliburton Corps,
00:17:22.180 the Lakes-Brock.
00:17:22.780 And remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom.
00:17:25.860 That's The Blueprint.
00:17:27.740 Thank you for listening to The Blueprint, Canada's Conservative Podcast.
00:17:36.560 To find more episodes, interviews, and in-depth discussions of politics in Canada,
00:17:40.480 search for The Blueprint on iTunes or visit podcast.conservative.ca.