The Candice Malcolm Show - 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

00:00:04.680 development. Meanwhile, the Trudeau government has approved a massive oil project in eastern

00:00:08.820 Canada, while at the same time they continue to block energy projects in western Canada.

00:00:13.560 What is with this blatant anti-western Canada bias? I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice

00:00:17.840 Malcolm Show.

00:00:30.000 Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning in today. So today I want to have a broader

00:00:33.600 discussion on the oil and gas industry, the energy industry in Canada. And to do so, I

00:00:38.480 am joined by my friend Michael Binion. Binion is a seasoned entrepreneur with a history of

00:00:42.980 starting financing and managing companies primarily in the oil and gas sector. He's the president

00:00:48.000 and founding shareholder of Questair Energy, a public oil and gas company that has production

00:00:52.800 operating in Quebec. He's also the executive director of the Modern Miracle Network, whose

00:00:57.680 mission is to encourage Canadians to have a reasoned conversation about energy issues

00:01:02.240 and that is sorely needed in this country. So Michael, thank you so much for joining us.

00:01:06.360 Oh, it's great to be here and it's great to see you again, Candice.

00:01:09.560 So in mid-April, the Quebec government announced that citizens, this is a story from CTV, citizens

00:01:15.500 officially win a fight to ban oil and gas development in Quebec. Quebec to become the first jurisdiction

00:01:20.500 in the world to explicitly ban oil and gas development in its territory after decades of campaigning

00:01:25.660 by environmental organizations and citizen groups. The newly adopted law will end petroleum

00:01:30.720 exploration and production, as well as public financing of those activities in Quebec. So

00:01:35.940 this is pretty drastic, Michael. What does this mean for our country? What does it mean for

00:01:40.740 you and your operations with Questair? And what can we take from this new law that's been imposed?

00:01:46.960 Yeah, well, I mean, there's a lot to unpack in that question. So, you know, first of all,

00:01:52.700 I think that, you know, we should be concerned as Ukraine makes us reconsider Canada's role in the

00:02:01.240 world. And I don't think that's true for people like yourself and others. I don't think any of us

00:02:06.760 didn't think that we shouldn't have been reconsidering far before now. But it's certainly,

00:02:11.240 I think, making people in the federal government reconsider our role in the world. I think it's

00:02:14.400 making a lot of Canadians think maybe our role in the world should change. And so as most of us start

00:02:20.800 realize that we really need to be thinking about being a place the world can count on as a supplier

00:02:28.100 of last resort, in effect, for resources. When rogue states or kleptocratic states are letting us down,

00:02:38.220 the world knows they can count on Canada, right? And it's discouraging for me that even with that

00:02:44.680 context that Quebec decided to continue on and go the opposite direction. And really basically tell

00:02:51.180 Germany and Europe that, you know, your solution for having built too many windmills is you should

00:02:57.300 build more windmills and we're not going to do anything to help you. So I find that just discouraging

00:03:02.140 as a Canadian that Quebec moved that way. You know, I also think that it's discouraging as well from

00:03:13.740 the point of view of that it went against a big move that's happening in the oil and gas industry

00:03:19.520 right now on technology. And I think contrary or very unexpectedly, oil and gas is racing to low and

00:03:30.140 zero emissions and has a really good chance. And I'm, and I'm, I've called it that we will, in fact,

00:03:36.440 get to zero or near zero or net zero, whatever you want to call it, we'll get there before wind and

00:03:41.080 solar. And so it's also discouraging that as Canada is emerging as this technological leader in low

00:03:46.100 emissions, oil and gas energy, like potentially lower emissions than wind and solar, even that we have,

00:03:51.960 we have a province that says, not only are we going to ban you from doing your zero emissions project,

00:03:57.880 we won't even let you pilot it to prove if it works.

00:04:01.880 It's really unbelievable. I mean, when you think about the significant reserves that exist in Quebec,

00:04:07.700 somewhere between 250 billion and 1000 billion, I guess, a trillion cubic meters, according to the

00:04:14.440 Financial Post, I mean, they're sitting on what could potentially be a huge boon to our economy, to their

00:04:20.280 own resource economy, talking about allowing people who live up north more economic opportunities,

00:04:25.400 more First Nations jobs. And to your point, I mean, you wrote that the Quebec bill will do nothing to

00:04:31.540 lower emissions. It's hard to wrap your head around why people in Quebec are so stubbornly opposed to

00:04:39.880 petroleum or carbon, you know, products. I mean, you spend a lot of time in Quebec, I know you speak

00:04:48.360 French, and you talk to a lot of people in Quebec, I know the sentiment exists across the whole country,

00:04:53.300 particularly on the political left, that they just don't want and they don't want oil period.

00:04:59.260 How can we how can we move beyond that conversation and start talking more about some things you just

00:05:04.280 mentioned? And maybe you can elaborate a little bit on the new technologies that are allowing oil and gas

00:05:09.260 exploration development to get closer to carbon zero.

00:05:12.440 Yeah, well, first of all, I should start that, you know, the quote that you made from that CTD article,

00:05:16.540 I felt was, or I think it was, it was, I'm not sure if it was CTD or RDI, but they talked about it,

00:05:22.400 that citizens have won this thing. That's just pure propaganda, right? Like, I don't have an issue

00:05:27.460 with the people of Quebec. The people of Quebec are 75% in favor of my project. Less, less than 15% of

00:05:35.100 Quebecers are against it, with, you know, another 10 to 15 undecided. So this is not, this is an issue of

00:05:41.420 political elites, and, and I would say also entrenched interests, who don't want competition

00:05:48.280 from lower emissions, cheaper energy, that this is entrenched interests and political elites that

00:05:53.760 are, that are, that are, you know, virtue signaling that we're, you know, we're the first place in the

00:05:58.220 world to ban oil and gas over, and, and, but over, over against their own people, right? So I think

00:06:06.320 that's one thing I want to say that I don't think that the people of Quebec are, have, have some

00:06:10.840 cultural difference, that they don't also like jobs, they don't also like to do better, that they

00:06:15.440 don't also want to help Ukraine and Germany, for example, right? So I think that's one thing I would 0.97

00:06:20.300 just say that, and that polling has been repeated over and over and over, like for years, and also

00:06:25.620 in the last year, as the government was contemplating this ban, Main Street did a poll, Leger's done

00:06:30.760 two polls. I think Agnes, Angus Reid did a poll, I'm pretty sure it was Angus Reid, and it was

00:06:37.140 different pollsters over a period of time have consistently shown that a majority of Quebecers

00:06:42.480 are in favor of developing their own resources and their own natural gas. So I'll, anyways, that's,

00:06:47.480 that's a key point. The other thing, just as you said about the size of it, just to confirm that, like

00:06:52.220 the Quebec, the Quebec discovery, the natural gas discovery that we have there, we could replace

00:06:58.680 50% of Russian exports to Germany. We could, it could be 10% of North American LNG exports.

00:07:06.800 It is, it would make Quebec self-sufficient in gas. It's a massive game-changer type of,

00:07:13.800 and of course, because it's so big, it does have disruptive elements. That's why I say, I think

00:07:18.720 there are, there certainly are, you know, people, entrenched interests in Quebec that are, you know,

00:07:23.320 not, not everybody will be affected positively. So that gets to sort of some of your thinking of,

00:07:28.380 like, why are Quebecers against this? I don't think that the average person on the street,

00:07:32.820 the average person on the street is. I don't know, can I just, maybe I'll just go, because I think

00:07:38.500 that your real question was about the technology, right? So if I can just head into that.

00:07:42.560 Yeah, let's, let's talk about the tech and what makes it so clean and what's changed.

00:07:46.700 Yeah, so I started looking at this a while ago, and partly it's because in Quebec, we, you know,

00:07:51.960 we got a ban or it was a temporary moratorium on fracking. And, you know, it's to do with,

00:07:58.740 it was basically to do environmental studies. So we went through 134 independent studies. It was

00:08:04.100 as an overall comprehensive study. It took three years in Quebec, mostly came and said that industry

00:08:10.360 was telling the truth all along. And I was, I was really encouraged to hear that independent

00:08:15.980 francophone PhDs, professors, researchers, basically were true scientists, they just went

00:08:23.420 and got the data and they wrote the reports and told the truth. And of course, these are the types

00:08:27.700 of studies that tend not to get reported in the news. And these are the types of professors and

00:08:32.020 researchers who don't tend to want to be in the news, they don't have an agenda, they're just

00:08:35.900 interested in science, right? So those studies exist, they've been there for a few years.

00:08:39.500 And, and, but what we did understand was, you know, maybe due to misinformation or not

00:08:46.020 misinformation, but that there was a demand in the population to say, we want to see lower impacts,

00:08:50.060 we are worried, because we've been told the word, we're worried about emissions. And, and, you know,

00:08:55.920 quite frankly, so am I. So that's not, we're worried about noise, I get that we're worried about

00:09:00.340 our water being contaminated, we're worried. So, so I said, well, okay, that's fair. What, what if we could

00:09:08.060 bring those all to zero, like, is it, so it was sort of this idea, instead of, this is the way we

00:09:12.780 do it now, this is business as usual, how do I improve on what we do now? I said, let's start at

00:09:18.160 this aspirational, theoretical, impossible to achieve goal, develop a project with zero impacts.

00:09:25.260 Well, the interesting thing about that is that it caused me to just really relook at the way we do

00:09:29.400 things in our industry. And in doing that, we did come up with, let's produce all the gas,

00:09:35.120 but let's use the local hydroelectricity. That cut 80% of our emissions. And then we said, well,

00:09:42.320 what about if we just install modern SCADA, modern, you know, AI is having an impact on, on us being

00:09:48.740 able to stop methane leaks and things like that. Modern, modern, better machined valves, all this,

00:09:54.100 you know, that, that cuts another 15% out. And then the last 5% of our emissions are, you know,

00:10:01.420 mostly what people could refer to as fugitive emissions and so on and so forth. So we can get

00:10:05.880 almost all of those with vapor cap, vapor capture systems, right? So that, so that was the first

00:10:11.800 thing we did. And, and then that was three years ago. And we proposed that and the environmentalist

00:10:16.720 immediately said to us, like immediately, oh, no, no, production's not the problem. It's the consumption

00:10:22.280 of your product. That's a problem. And I said, well, thanks for letting me know that. Because for the

00:10:26.080 last 10 years, you've been telling me that I was the problem, right? The minute I go to zero emissions,

00:10:30.140 you tell me I was never the problem. So, okay, thanks for that. So for the last three years,

00:10:34.580 I've been looking at the consumption, how do we make consumption of natural gas, zero emissions,

00:10:38.500 which of course, everybody says, well, that's impossible, right? Well, I thought producing it

00:10:42.660 was zero was impossible, but it wasn't. And we did things differently. The, the consumption side,

00:10:49.760 what, what we've now discovered through different technologies, and I was in high tech before I was

00:10:53.940 in oil and gas. So it's an area of interest for me. There are now, I've now come up, found dozens

00:10:59.500 of technologies, dozens, where you can take CO2, capture it from a flu stack or an industrial

00:11:07.020 process or from, you know, a power plant or wherever. And you can take that CO2 and, and

00:11:14.400 convert it using just organic chemistry, all well understood organic chemistry, by the way,

00:11:18.360 nobody's just, you know, nobody's inventing a cure for cancer here, right? It's just organic

00:11:23.400 chemistry. You can take that CO2, combine it with, you know, H2O and other compounds. There's dozens

00:11:30.920 and dozens of products you can make out of that. And a lot of them are expensive. You know, like,

00:11:35.620 I think some of them will be like, you know, you'd need $500 a tonne for the CO2 to make it pay.

00:11:40.000 But there are cement additives that you can make from CO2. So this is like basically in a,

00:11:45.260 in a plant, right? Put this, bring the CO2 into a plant, out of, out of the plant comes cement

00:11:50.100 additives. And those technologies are borderline economic with a zero price on carbon. There's,

00:11:57.700 there's others that I think with lower prices, you know, they would, they would need some sort of

00:12:02.020 price to be economic. And, but, but that got me excited, right? I said, if there's going to be a

00:12:10.600 $100 price or, and Trude is now talking about $200, $250 total price on carbon, so many of these

00:12:16.040 technologies are, are economic. And, and then the idea of capturing it and just storing it on our

00:12:20.820 ground is economic. So I looked at it and said, well, if we do what we did, like all the, let's

00:12:27.240 think about the three Rs, right? If we apply all the things I was talking to you about efficiencies

00:12:31.600 that could make our productions, that's called the reduce, the reduce element. That's just new

00:12:36.360 technologies and efficiencies. The recycle or reuse. So take that, capture that CO2, recycle it, reuse it,

00:12:44.820 turn it into a feedstock for products, industrial products, consumer products, and then three,

00:12:50.500 return it, our return, the third R being return it under the ground. So our project in Quebec,

00:12:55.520 for example, was an industrial hub. So we were 10 kilometers from industrial hub. What we had to do

00:13:02.100 was to put an extra CO2 line into the pipeline. So we put the gas line, a water line, and now we're

00:13:07.780 going to also put a CO2 line. We, we needed to do some extra compression, um, to be able to move that

00:13:15.240 CO2 and to store it underground. And we, we were going to sell the gas that we produced with near

00:13:21.460 zero emissions to the industrial hub, industrial users there, um, have them capture and return us

00:13:28.420 the CO2 through that CO2 return line, and then have some of that CO2 that's captured, used right

00:13:34.560 there in that industrial park to make things like cement additives. And so we were going to create,

00:13:39.560 which to my knowledge, if we had done it, um, would have been the world's first zero emissions

00:13:45.100 production and, and consumption of natural gas. We gave all that materials to the government and,

00:13:52.060 and they have, you know, they elected instead to go with the, we want to be the first in the world

00:13:57.160 to ban oil and gas. Well, why would you ban it if it's zero emissions? Like it's, it would be lower

00:14:01.000 impact than wind and solar. Why would you ban it? Well, I mean, you kind of answered the question

00:14:05.980 there with the moving goalposts, right? You, you, you found a way to, uh, extract it as zero emissions

00:14:11.540 and then they changed the, they changed the plans and no, no, no, now you have to do it, uh, consumption.

00:14:17.280 So, uh, that, that's part of the problem I suppose with working with, uh, environmental activists is

00:14:22.580 that they don't actually want to find a solution. They just want their way it seems.

00:14:27.160 I have a question because from my understanding of Canadian federalism, uh, natural resources are

00:14:34.480 federal jurisdiction, not provincial. And I, I, I wanted to ask you about how, how legally they

00:14:39.760 can, they can do something like this, uh, whether a conservative government could do anything if a

00:14:44.300 conservative government were elected federally, if they could do anything to override this.

00:14:48.200 Oh yeah. Right. Cause that's where you said federal, but you meant it's provincial, right?

00:14:51.180 Resources are provincial resources is what you meant to say, right?

00:14:53.940 Provincial.

00:14:54.340 Yeah. So, yeah. So I mean, what can the federal government do there? Well, I, I think, I think

00:14:58.700 the only thing the federal government can really do is to, is, is to do what they do in other

00:15:03.080 areas like health is to encourage, um, encourage, uh, cooperation with a national health strategy

00:15:12.480 or a national health policy. They can encourage that through their, through funding. Right.

00:15:16.320 And I think they could also encourage, um, cooperation with a national energy policy in a, in a similar

00:15:23.580 way, but, but at the end of the day, uh, health is run by the provinces and at the end of the

00:15:29.000 day, resources are run by the provinces. So, you know, they obviously have the final decision,

00:15:32.740 but there is, but the federal government certainly has strong, um, core, uh, powers of, uh, persuasion

00:15:38.880 to, uh, help, have people say, well, manage and run your own resources how you want, but please try

00:15:45.300 to cooperate with this national policy of that Canada's role in the world is to, is to be the

00:15:52.180 provider of last resort, to be that one place in the world, the world that, that people can count on

00:15:57.160 in when there's an emergency, like there is, or a crisis like there is today.

00:16:01.640 Well, I, I, I wanted to ask you about the equalization formula because Western provinces,

00:16:06.060 as you know, distribute billions of dollars towards Quebec every year. Fairness Alberta,

00:16:10.200 uh, estimates that Quebec receives approximately 13 billion, uh, per year. Um, you know, evidently the

00:16:16.680 provinces that contribute to the equalization fund or that they give more to the federal government

00:16:21.100 than they get back are all energy producing oil and gas producing provinces. Whereas we talked about

00:16:26.060 Quebec sits on a reserve, uh, that isn't. So I'm wondering, uh, what, what your thoughts are on

00:16:30.680 incorporating, um, untapped energy reserves into the equalization formula. Yeah, that's, that's

00:16:36.520 always been a thing. I mean, Pauline Merrois, when she was premier, um, said explicitly, why would we

00:16:41.560 develop our, uh, resources? It just reduces our equalization. Um, and what, what, what, the way she 1.00

00:16:48.060 put it, of course, because she was actually pro oil actually, but the way she put it, well, we should

00:16:52.040 separate first and then we should develop it so that we don't end up, we don't

00:16:55.940 end up having our oil and gas, um, go back to the rest of the country. So in the formula, you know,

00:17:01.840 it's a point you've made, I've written papers on this, or I guess op-eds to be more fair, um, that the

00:17:07.560 50% of the resource revenue in effect would be clawed back through the equalization formula. So Quebec

00:17:14.320 would only keep 50% of their resource revenues. Um, you know, when the Legault government was, uh, running or

00:17:20.720 elected their, their, their, uh, one of their campaign platforms was, uh, points was to get

00:17:27.320 Quebec off equalization. Um, you know, I, I think those are popular things to say and think, but

00:17:32.620 pragmatically, I think, you know, I think we've, we've seen the equalization just continues to go

00:17:37.140 up for Quebec. And of course, developing these resources for sure would make the, you know,

00:17:43.240 even in full development, I think we looked at it, it might get, it would get Quebec off a material

00:17:48.520 amount of equalization, not all of it, but it would be very material. But in effect, you know,

00:17:53.740 not all that money goes to Quebec. Some of that money would come to Canada, right?

00:17:57.520 Interesting. Uh, I want to change gears a little bit. We're talking about the feds and,

00:18:01.200 you know, generally speaking, I think a lot of Western Canadians look at Justin Trudeau and think

00:18:05.440 of his government as being anti-energy, anti-development, uh, blocking pipelines, banning,

00:18:09.760 uh, tanker ships off the West coast, making it more, more, more difficult. Um, I know that there was

00:18:14.140 that, I think it was bill 69, um, that, that required, you know, gender analysis when it came

00:18:18.920 to development projects. And it didn't seem like this government was ever going to approve an oil

00:18:22.800 and gas project, but lo and behold, uh, we saw that, that, that the Trudeau government approved

00:18:26.820 the Beta Nord, uh, project out in Newfoundland and Labrador off the coast. It'll include some

00:18:30.840 offshore drilling, uh, approximately 300 million barrels of oil. It's expected to create thousands

00:18:36.100 of jobs for Canadian and generate approximately $3.5 billion in government revenue. Uh, so I want,

00:18:42.240 I want to hear your thoughts on this project that it seems like it's good news, uh, that

00:18:45.420 the Trudeau government is moving forth with this program. Um, but what do you say to people

00:18:50.680 who still feel frustrated, uh, the, the feeling that projects are being strangled in Western

00:18:55.020 Canada at the same time?

00:18:57.180 Yeah. So a couple of things, first of all, uh, the government did, uh, did ultimately approve

00:19:02.300 and in fact, even financed, you know, after they chased Kinder Morgan out of the country,

00:19:06.700 um, with their, with their constant changes to the rules, uh, they then stepped up and

00:19:12.540 actually even approved. And then of course got forced to finance it. And, and a lot of

00:19:16.520 those, they will, I mean, every time I have people say, well, Oh, look at this, the federal

00:19:20.060 government's, uh, is actually even paying for your pipeline. Why are you guys complaining?

00:19:23.600 I'm like, you don't get it. None of us wanted that, right? No, nobody wanted the government

00:19:27.760 to make the rules so bad that no private sector company could ever build a pipeline. And so that

00:19:33.600 the government then had to pay for it out of our tax dollars. Like that's absolutely like,

00:19:37.660 it just infuriates me to hear people say that because nobody out here wanted the government

00:19:41.220 to pay for it. We just wanted them to go to be, to be fair and have it approved. Um, so

00:19:47.260 the, but they did approve that person. I think one of the big, one of the worst things that

00:19:50.640 the government did on the, basically the first week of being elected was canceled gateway pipeline.

00:19:55.600 This is, um, this is an unbelievably, you want to talk about Canada stepping up in the world

00:20:01.140 and, you know, being that country that, you know, like I, I, my feeling right now is it's

00:20:06.000 an opportunity for Canada to go up a weight class. We've, we've, we've, we've been our

00:20:09.780 entire existence to junior partner to Britain or to United States or to United Nations and

00:20:15.960 peacekeeping. We've been a junior partner punching above our weight. We've been so proud

00:20:19.400 of that. Um, more recently, I just see us being a junior partner punching below our weight.

00:20:23.980 Like we're just not, we're, we're floundering as a country, but we have this opportunity

00:20:27.700 now, I think to go up a full weight class, like we could be, we could be senior partners,

00:20:32.220 uh, face to face with America, Europe, Asia, saying we're the place that you can count on.

00:20:38.480 And we expect to be treated with that kind of respect. And by the way, it will pay for

00:20:42.600 you to give us that kind of respect because we are the ones that will keep you going when

00:20:46.140 there's a war. Right. Um, so, but gateway is the port of Prince Rupert, a full day closer

00:20:52.460 to Asia than Vancouver. Um, not, not super busy, populated, beautiful city like Vancouver.

00:20:58.340 I mean, this is a relatively underpopulated place. Uh, we, we should have our national

00:21:04.220 defense there for the Arctic. It's the closest port to the Arctic. We should have a map, you

00:21:09.080 know, massive port there for that, uh, major ports there for bringing goods in from Asia,

00:21:14.080 but also sending resources out highways, power lines, everything. It's just, it's a, it's

00:21:19.040 a, it's a very, um, visionary project. The Prince Rupert is a, is a, is a natural wonder

00:21:25.760 for Canada. Actually, if you spend some time looking at that Kitimat, Prince Rupert area,

00:21:30.740 but the other thing that was terrible about canceling that project is that there was close

00:21:34.720 to 40 first nations that had signed on to something so like 30 had signed 40 in the middle of negotiations

00:21:41.180 for benefits agreements. These are abjectly poor, uh, people in the north of British Columbia

00:21:47.320 and Alberta, and they had a chance to be lifted out of poverty. And instead we condemn them

00:21:52.900 to another generation of poverty. It's just, to me, it's, and, and by the way, it was done

00:21:56.900 without so much as a phone call. Like you talk about first nations should be consulted. Well,

00:22:01.620 when you take away somebody's future, how do you not at least call them at a very minimal

00:22:07.720 level of consultation? I mean, I've met so many chiefs up there who were just so dejected

00:22:12.660 and discouraged and, and, and felt absolutely powerless that their government wouldn't even

00:22:18.320 call them to say, look, we're sorry, nothing. It was just horrible. And, and, and there are

00:22:23.480 first nations kids not even born and we already know what their life's going to be like. It's 0.95

00:22:27.600 horrible. I think this has been one to your point about a government that's been anti-resource.

00:22:32.180 They've been really anti first nations too, on, in, in, in terms of ending on reserve poverty.

00:22:37.100 So I got a little bit off topic of your question, the discrimination there. I do think that there

00:22:43.300 has been a strong discrimination against resources. Generally, we saw that with Pierre Trudeau too.

00:22:48.100 There's this idea and it's been popularized since Pierre Trudeau in the 1950s, sixties that,

00:22:55.840 you know, we really should stop hewing wood and drawing water as to make our living like for our,

00:23:01.380 for our America, you know, for America, for Americans and other people. And we should join the

00:23:05.320 modern economy in the, in the sixties, it was manufacturing. What that led to was a branch

00:23:10.860 plant economy, but at least branch plant economies come with real jobs, you know, union jobs, right?

00:23:15.940 The current idea is that Canada is going to get away from primary production, hewing wood,

00:23:22.080 drawing water, and we're going to become a high tech country. But I tell you, being a branch plant

00:23:28.160 economy, when, you know, to, to the Googles and alphabets and, or I guess that's the same place,

00:23:33.540 apples and, and Amazons of the world, like they, we won't even create the union jobs this time. 1.00

00:23:40.660 We'll become a branch plant economy. So, you know, somebody will create a tech company,

00:23:45.360 three people will get rich, a bunch of employees will work for a couple of years and then get fired,

00:23:49.320 right? As soon as Amazon takes them out or whatever. So this is, this is a really dangerous

00:23:55.080 industrial policy. It's a seductive idea. We're going to do technology, right? Between that,

00:24:00.000 by the way, we were going to do services. The end of the world, at the end of the day, though,

00:24:04.820 if you look at it, what, what should a country do in a competitive world is we should do what we're

00:24:11.140 best at. You know, we should let other people do what they're best at. I mean, Canada should not

00:24:15.940 become, try to become a world leader in precision machine parts. We should not try to become a world

00:24:20.560 leader in mass manufacturing of t-shirts. We should not, I don't think we should try to become a

00:24:24.940 world leader in, in, in mass manufacturing at all, right? The, the, what we're the world's best at

00:24:31.640 is primary resources. And what's wrong with drawing water and hewing wood if you're the world's best

00:24:36.740 at it? What's wrong with that? There's nothing wrong with that. And, and by the way, the technology

00:24:41.500 involved to do that in today's world, it is one of the most, as I said, I started in tech. I work in

00:24:46.520 oil and gas now. It is higher. It is, I deal with more technology. It's a higher tech industry

00:24:51.680 than the high tech industry is, if you can believe that. Like when I was doing high tech

00:24:56.000 startups, it was one, I was dealing with one technology or one in, in oil and gas, I'm

00:25:01.180 dealing with hundreds of technologies and they're all amazing. And by the way, you don't get to

00:25:04.900 zero, you can't get to these zero emissions ideas without that new technology. That's this new carbon

00:25:09.920 tech is going to be incredible. That ramble around a little bit. But I, I, I, I think that the

00:25:17.180 government has been anti-resource. I do think Ukraine is causing to rethink things. We are

00:25:23.500 seeing some positive signs, but, but there's been some horrible mistakes made in the early

00:25:28.000 part of their term. I think there's some, there's really some serious glimmers of hope

00:25:32.240 in their most recent pronouncements that they're getting it, that they're getting Canada should

00:25:36.240 be the best. We should do it. We're the best in the world. If only because the rest of the

00:25:40.160 world needs us to do it. Right. And, and if anything, I think that the lesson the world needs

00:25:45.680 to learn from Germany and their failed green energy policies is it's created a huge dependency 0.97

00:25:51.680 on Russian gas. And, and, and that's part of the fueling of this conflict. And it's so obvious that

00:25:56.960 you can draw a straight connection between, you know, Putin's tanks and Germany's green energy

00:26:02.860 policies. So it's, it's really, I guess, good that, that the Trudeau government is, is really

00:26:07.380 that I have final question for you, Michael, you wrote an op-ed here at True North, where you,

00:26:12.020 you talked about how Canada takes a very myopic approach to energy. And we sort of see it as

00:26:16.400 two very black and white options, either business as usual, kind of neglect the environment and just

00:26:22.760 do what we can to make money, or on the alternative, completely banning oil and gas, which just seems

00:26:27.520 like that's the route that folks in government in Quebec and many environmentalists want to take.

00:26:33.120 You instead suggest and discuss what you call the third option. I was wondering if you could just

00:26:37.620 elaborate on what that looks like, and, and how you can see Canada sort of balancing these two

00:26:43.060 sort of traditional opposing ideals.

00:26:46.000 Yeah, well, I'm really hoping that this, that one, you know, out of, out of a crisis, sometimes,

00:26:51.280 you know, silver linings or good things emerge. I'm hoping that what it might emerge is what I

00:26:56.720 think is a 21st century approach to energy and environment. And I think where we're locked into

00:27:01.700 is a 1900s or 20th century idea. I think in the late 1900s, there was this idea that continuous

00:27:08.820 growth could not be sustained. And that, and so therefore, we had to make a choice between

00:27:15.340 business as usual, which we knew was going to make, you know, like, make make the environment

00:27:21.460 for some people think, to a serious crisis that we wouldn't even be able to live in it, but, but

00:27:27.220 definitely hurt the environment. Or our other option was to, was to go along the, well, let's

00:27:31.760 ban oil and gas. And it's just going to mean you have to learn to live with less. And that, you

00:27:35.920 know, like, like some of the weffers say, you know, you're, you're not going to own anything

00:27:38.980 and you're going to be happy about it. So, but that, but that to me is, it was a, was a 19,

00:27:44.380 1900, late 1900s, 20th century approach. And we've just locked ourselves into that business

00:27:49.660 as usual, or, and, and, and, and you, by the way, using the technology of the end of

00:27:54.080 the 20th century, that probably was, there's probably truth to that. It's just, it's the

00:27:59.480 technology. And as I was describing earlier, the technology has advanced, has advanced and

00:28:03.600 is advancing very quickly. Here's another thing that people make, you know, get stuck into

00:28:08.680 that sort of 20th century idea. They also sort of seem to have this idea that oil and gas

00:28:12.700 technology is static, and it's only wind and solar who whose technology is advancing. But the,

00:28:18.920 but it's the opposite. There's, there's enormous amounts more money being invested in research

00:28:24.460 and development in oil and gas, and there isn't wind and solar, the industry is way bigger.

00:28:27.980 The number, you know, number of patents, number of everything, it's a lot more. So that that's

00:28:33.560 another false idea that oil and gas technology is static. So we have this sort of thing about

00:28:37.700 let's compare what wind and solar will be with 2050 technology to what oil and gas was with 1999

00:28:44.240 technology. And oh, I guess, isn't it the, isn't the answer obvious. So the, so what I guess

00:28:49.780 I'm really saying on this third option is that application of new carbon tech, which is that

00:28:55.200 what I went through the idea of being able to reduce through efficiencies cycle or return

00:29:02.160 under the ground, our carbon emissions, that we can do that. You know, looking at the example

00:29:08.100 of Europe, at least, at least, you know, with what we know today, we can do that cheaper

00:29:13.160 than trying to roll out wind with today's technology and today's batteries, it would be cheaper for

00:29:18.660 us to, so I'm calling that, that's not, that's not do a transition from one energy to another.

00:29:23.780 Let's keep all of our energies, including wind and solar, but let's transform oil and gas

00:29:29.660 into zero emissions energy or low emissions energy. And that, and an energy transformation

00:29:34.420 is a third option on climate, as opposed to the, you know, what I, what I, I mean,

00:29:39.560 the other thing I say, like I just said that the environmentalists of the last century, they,

00:29:43.740 thank you. You did a great job. You, you, you did the alarm bell. There's going to be 10 billion

00:29:48.700 people. It's going to create environmental challenges. Thank you for waking us up to that,

00:29:52.560 but you haven't had a new idea in 50 years besides ban and block. So retire and let a new generation 1.00

00:29:59.700 of environmentalists who are solutions oriented, technology oriented, let them take over and let's

00:30:05.500 solve the problem from the, with private market solutions. Oh, that sounds great. I, I, I like to

00:30:11.080 hear that there is a new generation of, of environmental thinkers that aren't as doom and gloom as the one

00:30:16.240 that get marched out in front of the media. People like Greta Thunberg, who just basically, you know, 1.00

00:30:22.040 her job is to complain and to look angry and, and not really be productive in the conversation anyway. 1.00

00:30:26.960 So it's good to hear that there are people out there making reasonable cases and that the technology

00:30:32.300 is really speaking for itself. So Michael Binion, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for

00:30:37.080 joining us on the podcast. It's always great to hear from you. Yeah, it was fun. Thank you.

00:30:41.320 All right. Thank you so much. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.

The Candice Malcolm Show - May 05, 2022

Trudeau’s blatant anti-Western Canadian bias continues

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