The Impact of Inflation on Oil and Gas
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
198.05884
Summary
In this episode, we continue on analyzing and taking another look at the newly sworn in Liberal cabinet and the people that have been appointed to it. This time, we are joined by the Minister for Natural Resources of Record, Greg McLennan.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
hello and welcome once again to the blueprints this is canada's conservative podcast i'm your
00:00:09.540
host jamie schmell member of parliament for halliburton for the likes brock bringing you
00:00:13.300
new content every single tuesday 1 30 p.m eastern time we do appreciate you joining us and with this
00:00:19.160
content it is great messaging you might not be getting by the mainstream media so with that we
00:00:24.180
ask that you like comment subscribe share this program help us push back against the ever-moving
00:00:29.220
liberal agenda and in fact if you can't watch or listen to it all right now right this second you
00:00:35.220
can download it listen to it later on on platforms like cast box google play spotify you name it it is
00:00:41.340
out there great topic going on today i know we touched on it a bit last week with our guest ed
00:00:46.320
fast the finance critic of record member of parliament for abbotsford we're going to continue
00:00:51.020
on analyzing and taking another look at the newly sworn in liberal cabinet because i think there
00:00:58.600
are some folks in this cabinet that are going to cause great harm to our national unity and to
00:01:05.180
talk more about that we have greg mcclain a good friend of the show member of parliament for calgary
00:01:09.720
center he's also the critic for natural resources of record we do appreciate him coming on thank you so
00:01:14.860
much once again thank you jamie great to see you all right well let's get right at it because this
00:01:20.640
might take a lot of our conversation we have a a couple of very scary appointments in in your neck
00:01:27.740
of the woods in the uh natural resources sector we have john wilkinson moved over from uh environment
00:01:34.240
over to natural resources replacing seamus uh or uh seamus um uh oregon yeah oregon sorry yes i had a
00:01:42.100
brain cramp there and uh he was i guess from newfoundland so he was somewhat fairly pro energy uh replaced
00:01:49.740
him with wilkinson and then brought in mr censorship mr bill c10 what you can see on the internet and
00:01:56.580
watch steven gilbo brought over from heritage into environment and we all know his background
00:02:02.680
heavily in the activism probably hasn't created a job ever what does this mean what are you hearing
00:02:09.140
on the ground what does this mean for your sector your your province the oil and gas industry
00:02:13.000
yeah let's analyze that jamie because first of all seamus oregon uh was the minister of natural
00:02:18.380
resources previously and seamus and i had a dialogue because seamus is from a producing province and
00:02:23.780
i think the province in canada most dependent on oil and gas and the revenues that come from oil and
00:02:28.500
gas that pay for government programs is of course newfoundland where seamus oregon is from so the
00:02:33.860
dialogue that seamus needed to have or pardon me minister oregon needed to have had to have that
00:02:39.140
balance in there about why we need to continue to develop our natural resources in this country
00:02:43.600
along with the environmental message and as you know in caucus i'm big on the environmental message
00:02:48.520
how we do things very well in this country from a natural resources perspective and we need to
00:02:53.200
continue to apply technology so that our carbon footprint is lower and lower and lower
00:02:57.540
seamus did that well you can kind of tell from all the decisions that cabinet made that his voice
00:03:02.800
wasn't carrying that much sway in cabinet while other parties were actually moving in a different
00:03:08.000
direction with obviously a different agenda and that agenda now is quite clear uh jonathan wilkinson
00:03:14.980
has been the minister of the environment minister wilkinson and frankly i've appeared at the minister at
00:03:19.540
the uh environment committee of you know standing uh committee of parliament and i find uh my questioning
00:03:26.620
to mr wilkinson at the time our colleague dan albus inviting me there to question the minister
00:03:30.740
uh very smug somebody that you know frankly doesn't know how to collaborate doesn't know how to work
00:03:37.740
doesn't know how to actually work to get things done with other parties it's his way or the highway
00:03:43.320
and you can kind of tell as you and i have discussed before environment is a department without much
00:03:48.540
programming but with lots of funds that it drips into a bunch of organizations that repeat the messages
00:03:54.680
that the government wants to hear so it's sort of like okay we will fund this organization and they
00:03:59.880
will deliver a message that we will latch on to it's this circle of money in politics of taxpayer money
00:04:05.520
of how the government gets to keep their agenda moving jonathan wilkinson now has moved over to
00:04:10.820
natural resources and natural resources of course has a lot of programming and our can has a bunch of
00:04:17.940
money allocated through cabinet to actually apply programming about how we move forward in the
00:04:23.480
direction of actually making uh our our production more environmentally friendly my great concern is that
00:04:30.560
minister wilkinson does not really understand how we actually make our production in canada more
00:04:35.460
environmentally friendly he's more bent towards actually shutting down our production because
00:04:40.080
he sees it as much of the rest of the world you know it's the same production it is not the same
00:04:44.880
production it is much better production serving our energy needs we are the energy supplier of choice
00:04:50.200
in the world and we need to know that on top of that they named minister guilbo as you talked about the
00:04:57.300
previous minister of communications who completely blew that file i mean anybody watching parliament
00:05:02.020
saw what what that bill was about c10 internet censorship the effective end of net neutrality the
00:05:08.680
effective re-imposition of the crtc with a new raison d'etre talk about you know going where canadians do not
00:05:16.480
want to go at this point in time hopefully they're not watching during a you know major world pandemic
00:05:21.400
because this is censorship at its most extreme well he failed at that file and now they're pushing him
00:05:26.240
into environment let's recognize everybody had a life before they came in department most of us did
00:05:31.000
mr guilbo's life before we came in department was as the head of ecu-ter which is really the quebec
00:05:37.140
branch of greenpeace so all he's been is an activist do you know what percentage of canadians are
00:05:42.160
represented by activists zero actually but how about you know representative four percent maybe
00:05:47.240
so now we're going to have the tail wagging the dog as far as our environmental policy about what's
00:05:53.140
good for the environment what's good for the environment for canadians what's good for the
00:05:57.540
world is being driven by ideologues that really don't have a sense of the outcome and are not
00:06:02.820
transparent about where they're taking canadians so you're saying there's a couple things to unpack
00:06:08.360
there you're saying with the the money flowing from government to other organizations that parrot a
00:06:13.200
message or create a narrative that the government then follows we see or have evidence there's been
00:06:18.920
lots of research done in this of of influence from different countries different organizations
00:06:24.100
where anti-energy anti-oil and gas funneling money to organizations to to fight that cause to fight
00:06:31.580
canadian energy production and now we're just going to see it on the other hand with the government of
00:06:37.080
canada actually potentially funneling money into the friendly organizations that will create the
00:06:42.120
narrative that the government wants to follow well it's been doing it for years i mean it's nothing new
00:06:46.180
that the federal government funds organizations that stand in the way of canadian projects and all
00:06:51.100
in them all in the in the whole issue of virtue signaling saying okay we'll fund this organization
00:06:56.160
because they have a very you know positive agenda we want to make sure that they have the rights to
00:07:00.520
you know commit the law fair we call it to delay these projects and those are all funded by government
00:07:06.020
programming much of that government program comes from organizations that are funded by the government of
00:07:10.600
canada so it's peripheral but it's still government of canada taxpayer money that's funding up
00:07:15.280
the lack of progress we're seeing in so many of our developments in canada yes jane
00:07:19.100
not only that so over the past six years or so we have regulated reports like no other we've stopped
00:07:27.440
pipeline development we've curtailed investment we've stopped in some cases projects that were
00:07:34.420
given approval from going ahead demand is up warnings all over the place all over the world about
00:07:41.340
soaring energy prices especially this winter and yet we have a very responsible industry here in this
00:07:48.840
country being hampered by bad government policy all the while all these other actors these bad actors
00:07:57.020
are continuing to meet that demand with supply that don't care about the environment don't care about
00:08:02.320
labor don't really care about much other than making that profit and and i i i i i feel bad for those
00:08:11.160
who have already been hit with inflation already and now potentially this winter we're looking at
00:08:17.380
significant increases just to keep warm correct now you know everyone else as i said had his job
00:08:24.140
before we came here into politics now i worked in finance and in finance we always say follow the money
00:08:28.780
see who's making money in this process taxpayers are funding this taxpayers are funding this what is the
00:08:34.460
outcome i think it's very clear that we need to explain to canadians here's what you're funding at this
00:08:39.000
point in time you need to see what the end result is here now i'm very much solution driven and i want
00:08:44.520
to make sure that we're getting better environmental outcomes but also making sure that canadians
00:08:48.620
transparently understand what this means for them going forward and i think that's a clarity the
00:08:53.260
canadian the canadian government has not yet shown canadians on where their actual extra taxing of
00:08:59.200
canadians in this effort is going to lead us we're going to be energy insecure we're going to be paying
00:09:05.220
much more for energy that means much more for our food much more for heating our homes in the summer
00:09:09.980
much more for cooling our places and cooling our place in the summer and heating our place in the winter
00:09:14.520
this is something that we have to continue to pay in canada because we are not going to freeze
00:09:19.120
in the dark in canada this is our role make sure we've got the ability to sustain ourselves and
00:09:25.640
make sure we're actually well fed because you take a look in canada i'm from calgary and 90 percent of
00:09:31.280
our food comes from further than 100 kilometers away we're not a great food producing area around
00:09:36.640
calgary we get a lot shipped in that's true in many respects you think about how many canadians
00:09:41.340
eat bananas how many bananas do we produce in canada let me ask you this is all costing fuel to get in
00:09:46.300
here we all we all pay to have it delivered and as the government continues to ramp up the cost of that
00:09:51.300
and build inflation through taxes into what we're paying it has an escalating increase on what we're
00:09:58.700
going to have to spend now i'll ask you to ask your viewers do they see that escalating increase
00:10:03.500
in their incomes the answer is very clearly no so you've got inflation at one end with no uh with no
00:10:11.040
increase in your wages it's what we call stagflation is what we're going to face here at the end of the
00:10:15.480
day so the other thing is they these activists and those tied and snuggling up to government they won't
00:10:22.060
be the one freezing they won't be the one without full bellies like the the lights never go out in
00:10:28.160
caracas right in the government quarter right like the the government crew is always well flat fed their
00:10:34.440
their fridge always has bounty but to to those kind of on the lower to lower middle um they're going to
00:10:40.900
be hurt the most here like some just quick numbers here bacon and ontario increased 19 percent from
00:10:47.480
august of of uh 20 uh to 21 um in alberta we can go over some numbers here i don't want to
00:10:54.520
bore the the the viewers here but yogurt up six percent apple 16 percent bacon 15 percent british
00:11:00.340
columbia butters up 12 percent brown beef 15 percent uh new brunswick hot dogs april like these are
00:11:06.420
significant increases and and when you're filling your your cart and seeing that you're not getting
00:11:12.740
as much for what you're paying and like you said your paychecks aren't following this this matching rise
00:11:18.960
this really affects people exactly it affects people it affects your outcomes it affects the
00:11:25.660
way you feed your family of course it actually affects the choices you have to make as far as
00:11:29.840
what you spend your paycheck on at the end of the day and those choices are becoming more and more
00:11:33.760
limited uh you actually look i think the stats canada came out this month and you know it's the
00:11:39.280
highest it's been in 18 years at 4.4 percent nominal inflation for the month of september it's a
00:11:45.260
little lower than it is in the states so things we usually follow the states we'll find out where
00:11:48.900
we go this winter as things get more expensive in canada in the winter months uh so let's look at
00:11:54.300
that first of all but you're right food is the most important thing but we've also increased our energy
00:11:58.320
cost part of that of course is the fact that we've become short of energy because the world has
00:12:02.480
stopped producing energy because of all the uh the narrative around energy we've stopped drilling for
00:12:07.620
more oil and gas good thing in canada we're still well supplied here but there are all kinds of
00:12:13.240
actions trying to stop us from being well supplied for our energy inputs in canada that includes our
00:12:18.020
oil includes our natural gas which is one of the best ways we can help the world decarbonize was
00:12:22.920
actually getting our resource to markets this is one of the things we need to kind of build into
00:12:27.400
our solutions going forward on how we contribute to the world's energy security going forward because i
00:12:33.680
can tell you it doesn't matter how green your revolution is if people aren't eating and people
00:12:38.120
aren't able to pay their bills you're going to see a much more drastic outcome than anything we've
00:12:42.760
experienced thus far and that is already on the horizon in europe many of us didn't expect it in
00:12:47.940
europe as quickly as we expected in california i guess it's kind of a little bit of short-sightedness
00:12:52.100
in our part we're all we are all seeing the what we look at is the economic debacle that's happening
00:12:57.580
in europe as they continue to be on that quantitative easing uh ferris wheel if you will uh and eventually
00:13:04.420
that has to end nobody that's been on quantitative easing any country any uh currency issuing entity like
00:13:11.100
the european union shows how you get off that quantitative easing program and that's where
00:13:15.880
the canadian government is going right now it has actually quadrupled the size of the balance sheet of
00:13:21.540
the bank of canada 125 billion before the pandemic to 500 billion at this point in time so think about
00:13:29.440
the deficits we run in canada in between we had about a 350 billion dollar deficit last year
00:13:34.160
and and this year we're already over 150 billion dollars so it's gone up by 375 billion dollars of
00:13:41.080
the bank of canada that means much of the debt we're issuing three quarters of it is on our own
00:13:46.700
balance sheet you tell me how that works we're we're paying bills to ourselves you got a little
00:13:51.760
iou in our pocket that we owe ourselves a bunch of money and we've been we've taken out cash on it well
00:13:56.380
eventually that cash is going to be worth a lot less so those are the issues we have to face going
00:14:01.900
forward here there's there's all kinds of things in the push inflation i will tell you very clearly
00:14:06.400
and you know this and our colleagues know this as we've talked about it in caucus there was no other
00:14:13.020
outcome to quantitative easing and printing all this money but inflation so if that wasn't the
00:14:19.260
government's goal then they clearly didn't have their eye on the ball so this is the outcome that they
00:14:25.540
were hoping for now this is the outcome on the plates of canadians and they're trying to absolve
00:14:30.760
themselves of them saying well this is only temporary escalating inflation is not temporary
00:14:35.760
it only becomes temporary if you stop it but eventually people especially people that are
00:14:41.200
working are saying i'm working just as much as i ever did and i no longer have the take home pay to
00:14:47.000
pay my bills pay my kids food pay my you know my my fuel and my transport to go to work these are
00:14:54.500
real world things so we need to get ahead of this and make sure that we're addressing this
00:14:58.060
for the sake of canadians and our lifestyle i think for those on the left they believe that
00:15:02.980
government can be the solution to this right you just create more money and people have more money
00:15:06.940
to spend and it's all good and and we'll get there right venezuela tried it zimbabwe and many others
00:15:11.760
and it failed miserably but i guess maybe they feel that they're just super smart and able to figure
00:15:16.560
this one out where where others have failed and at the same it's what we call jamie it's what we call
00:15:21.780
moral hazard and i will i will make a criticism here of the central banks around the world including the
00:15:27.180
central bank in canada is that nobody knows how this ends it's all a big experiment and this represents
00:15:34.040
moral hazard for the canadian population we do not know how this is going to unwind at the end of
00:15:40.320
the day because it's never unwind every central entity that's uh entered into quantitative easing
00:15:46.080
has had no ability to exit it so effectively we're sitting with a much bigger balance sheet
00:15:50.920
of actual money that uh that is actually causing a problem in society and that problem of course is
00:15:55.940
much more debt not just the government level but we've created debt throughout society assets have
00:16:00.900
gone through the roof this is why house prices are worth 26 percent more now than they were before the
00:16:06.900
pandemic because all this money flooded in the system like we talked about 375 billion dollars
00:16:11.980
of government money going into the equation where's that going to go well very few like 20 billion
00:16:17.460
dollars i think people took care of their actual uh credit card debts but most of it ended up in
00:16:22.680
assets so people with assets had an escalating asset price you know people without assets are poor
00:16:29.220
we're creating a huge division in society the warning i would give people from a financial
00:16:34.180
perspective is what goes up usually comes down yes so something's gone up 26 percent in one year
00:16:40.460
you can expect what we call reversion to the mean that means average and recognize the cost of real
00:16:46.560
estate or the price of real estate historically goes up by about two to three percent a year so 26 percent
00:16:52.400
in one year is a vast anomaly oh i couldn't agree with you more and and just to build on what you said
00:16:59.080
earlier about what the government is spending on not all of it is is supports for businesses and
00:17:04.520
individuals they they have created a whole slew of programs couched in the language of covid that
00:17:09.520
actually had nothing to do with covid or the recovery and i think that's the problem we have
00:17:14.040
with a lot of this it's it's as we started off the show they are rewarding their friends and punishing
00:17:19.760
their enemies piling on the debt and putting it on to future generations or some other government to
00:17:25.620
clean up yeah what's the stat i saw and i think of the 450 to 500 billion dollars they've issued so
00:17:32.140
far just over 100 billion dollars of that has been for covid programming for employment now that might
00:17:37.620
be that number might be adjusted a little as we go forward here the rest of it is all kinds of what's
00:17:42.000
our favorite program we can we can actually throw money at here most governments in canadian history
00:17:46.840
have had to make their choices what do we fund here money coming in money going out and a lot of
00:17:51.820
governments of course have funded it with deficit financing that is borrowing from the future
00:17:55.820
generation in order to pay today's bills and they justify it by saying well we're building something
00:18:00.480
better for the next generation how do you justify that now when we're saying looking two generations
00:18:05.900
out and saying your taxes are going to have to pay the bills of this generation there are people
00:18:12.260
that aren't even born yet that are going to be paying taxes to pay the interest on the debt that
00:18:18.680
we've accumulated during this last period but the demand for services does not go anywhere
00:18:22.980
no we're going to need services people are going to have to every generation has their own
00:18:27.820
problems they're going to have to solve so you know whatever happens 10 years from now of course is going
00:18:32.940
to require some government intervention and i know the parliamentary budget officer and i had this
00:18:37.200
analysis when he gave his whole debt to gdp analysis and you take a look at every 10 years or so
00:18:43.420
governments have to step in there and commit a whole bunch of money to solve a problem
00:18:46.840
now the problem with you know ongoing keynesianism if you will is that keynesianism is supposed to be
00:18:53.220
about filling in when when times are bad and then getting out when times are good governments usually
00:18:58.560
forget the second half of that because they want they want to take away the cookie bowl well you know
00:19:03.520
what you have to and now you got fiscal keynesianism on top of you know modern monetary theory uh
00:19:10.620
quantitative easing just printing money so you've got it at two ends here and eventually people are going
00:19:16.240
to see this is over levered and there's no value in the money anymore so just quickly going back to
00:19:22.900
the oil and gas sector and and what is the what do you after what we just talked about what they've
00:19:27.840
done in the last six years what's what's to come based on who's the minister of natural resources
00:19:32.960
environment uh what what are people in the industry saying now they're they're looking at this they must
00:19:38.500
they must have a few thoughts i'm sure that you maybe publicly yeah well you know i had a i had a good
00:19:44.620
meeting with an advisory group that i have in calgary and this was yesterday morning before
00:19:48.760
the announcement but we had some tilting of what we thought the the two uh the two ministers that
00:19:54.340
were speaking about what their point would be and uh and i told them look as in my opinion having been
00:19:59.740
in parliament for two years this is bad news this is bad news for the industry this means that they are
00:20:04.960
going whole hog into a narrative that says we're we're the world's most virtuous country and you know
00:20:12.020
we're going to commit to this and commit to that all of which is going to be detrimental to the world
00:20:16.180
and to canadians and i say that because canadian solutions for energy production are still the best
00:20:22.500
in the world the minute we step out of that we yield the game to other foreign producers and those
00:20:29.620
foreign producers have nowhere near the environmental accountability that canadian companies have the
00:20:35.500
canadian regulatory regime usually provincial is very strict on what it allows its energy companies
00:20:41.880
to do and it requires reporting it requires remediation reclamation it is robust here compared
00:20:48.740
to everywhere else in the world and i know that personally because i've actually done business
00:20:52.720
in other countries and i've seen what their practices are on environmental remediation so we do
00:20:58.120
lead the world we need to continue to lead the world you look at how much difference we've made
00:21:02.560
in reducing our carbon footprint on oil and gas production in canada over the last
00:21:08.120
six to ten years it is monumental compared to everywhere else in the world so think about
00:21:14.620
how seriously we as a country we as the energy industry in canada take that and you will recognize
00:21:20.640
that there are other parties in the world that do not take it that seriously and think about who's
00:21:24.900
going to fill the void that we create by not being the energy secure supplier for the world
00:21:31.380
that is very well said uh we have gone a bit over time but i do appreciate i could keep asking you
00:21:37.780
questions over and over again this this is great we'll have to have you on again to to continue this
00:21:42.260
but as you know i always give the the guests the the final word here um is there anything else you
00:21:47.940
want to add to your your comments already well i'm looking forward to be back in part of it with
00:21:52.180
you jamie uh make sure we get some good government here in canada so we can hold this government
00:21:57.260
their feet to the fire they've avoided us in parliament for a year and a half now you know that
00:22:01.240
they one liberal shows up at a time in the house of commons well we've got as many as we can in the
00:22:06.340
covid type parliament showing up trying to get answers from the government i want to make sure
00:22:10.660
the media gets there as well to see what these answers are canadians deserve real answers and real
00:22:16.120
transparency from their government that's our job right now is the opposition i'm hoping that they
00:22:20.260
see it the same way that we see it uh and eventually this becomes illustrated becomes more
00:22:24.380
transparent to them about the folly of the direction this current government is taking
00:22:28.580
and we've also got cop 26 coming up here in the next couple weeks we need a canadian position there
00:22:33.720
that actually makes sense for canada and makes sense for the world's environment let's get this
00:22:38.060
moving forward thanks jerry with you more greg mcclain member of parliament for calgary center he's
00:22:43.140
also the national natural resources clinic of record i love talking to this guy about finance about
00:22:48.440
the oil and gas industry he's a wealth of knowledge appreciate your service not only to your
00:22:52.520
riding but the the country as well and your your passion for the industry we will have you on again
00:22:57.540
and talk more thank you jamie as i mentioned new content every single tuesday 1 30 p.m eastern time
00:23:03.680
we ask that you like comment subscribe share this program help us push back against the ever-moving
00:23:08.440
liberal agenda of course if you can't watch or listen to this whole program right this second
00:23:12.360
download it listen to it later on and platforms like cast box itunes google play spotify you name it
00:23:17.280
it is out there as always remember low taxes less government more freedom that's the blue place