Canadians for affordable energy
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Summary
On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, Dan Gooden. Dan is a consumer advocate and consumer advocate who has long been a voice in the pro-choice and anti-pipeline movements in Canada and the United States. He is a regular contributor to the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail and has been a long-time supporter of the Canadian oil and gas industry.
Transcript
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Corey, it's always a pleasure. Just what a day.
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Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, for a person with your specialty,
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some of the commenters have already been looking forward to seeing you.
00:00:10.140
I mean, you've been outspoken on energy issues and consumer issues for a long time.
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And as I kind of said, now's the period where it's a mixed blessing,
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I mean, you've been shouting this from the rooftops for a long time,
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and now it's really come home to roost, hasn't it?
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Well, you know, I live here in Eastern Canada in Oakville.
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It's nice to be able to finally look at my neighbors and say, you believe me now?
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Heading to $2 a liter before, you know, you finally woke up?
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My kids say it's a little bit like shaking someone's head and hearing the rattle here.
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So, I mean, you know, something you didn't see, I'm sure, not many of us.
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I mean, we saw the lack of local energy security,
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and we've been kind of throttling our local production abilities
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But we didn't anticipate the Ukraine-Russia war to really take it
00:01:06.060
We're in kind of a lot of trouble across the country.
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This, you know, on top of the inflation from a lot of other factors,
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Well, look, denying your own resources and your ability to help stabilize the world
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after, what, 30, 40 years of being subject to the vagaries of inflation
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and OPEC should have waken people up to the reality that the hard-fought move
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in the mid-20s, 2003 to 2010, both to increase Canada's oil capacity
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and the U.S. fracking, wasn't done out of, you know,
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out of the goodness of our hearts or because we were bored.
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It was done because the alternative was that we were on our knees and, you know,
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at the beck and call of those who had oil and those who had hydrocarbons.
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The fact that we got there only to find a generation of people now saying,
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times are good, you know, money's easy, we got all our fat pensions,
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we got all of our roads paid for and all our hospitals paid for, not really,
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but, you know, I think we've taken for granted the very thing that gave Canada
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a substantial boost in its prosperity over the past 20 to 25 years.
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And we've looked a gift horse in the mouth by saying, hey,
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who gives a damn that we can raise $25 net billion from the oil and gas sector
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that pays for our hospitals, that pays for education, that pays for our roads,
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and it doesn't matter where you are in this country.
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I think what's happened now, Corey, is that this is a little bit like dumping
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a, you know, a coal pail of water on everyone's head and making them stand up
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and realize, hey, you can't take these things for granted.
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You got the United States embarrassingly going on Bendini to Iran and to Venezuela,
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two countries with great environmental track records, great human rights records.
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Now we're saying, oh, can we get a bit of oil, please?
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Because we were too busy shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline.
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I spent a lot of time working with media in the United States in my previous job at GasBuddy,
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They could not see what was happening in Canada, the deconstruction, the attack,
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the activism, the foreign-funded groups that were destroying our oil and gas sector
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while Canadians sat back and lived high on the hog.
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The Americans didn't believe this was going to happen.
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Well, now reality is beginning to bite, and they're having none of it.
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Unlike many Canadians who have realized far after it's too late, America's actually preemptively
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saying to Mr. Biden, you and your Congress, you and your Democratic friends over in the
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House of Representatives, get ready, because we're going to put you on the 30-yard line,
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and we're going to punt you right through the end zone.
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Yeah, they've got some midterms coming up that they're not looking very good for right
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now, and nothing sours political support faster than hitting everybody in the pocketbook just
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But they don't seem to be showing, like, what I'm wondering, are we going to learn?
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And I mean we in general, not to mention that the government's learning from this.
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Like, Biden, as you said, is going and groveling to Saudi Arabia, but he's never uttered a
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peep on even considering increasing Canadian supply.
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We're right on his doorstep, and he just absolutely will not consider that as an alternative.
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No, no, because they're beholden to the green grifters who have been having a good run of
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I mean, there's actually some people I speak to, many of my friends in America say they
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didn't like Trump, but it was sure a heck of a lot better back then than it is now.
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Look, you limit your options when you forget the recent history of your country, and Americans
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have to be able to understand that their place in the world, and global security goes hand
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in hand with energy security, the extent to which you compromise that, you play games
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with that, you'll learn the lesson the Europeans are learning.
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Even Boris Johnson today knows that his net zero fantasies have been blown to smithereens.
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Like it or not, they've got to accept that oil is still very much a part of the foreseeable
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So all these ideas of, you know, this political demagoguery of, you know, we have to have
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net zero by a certain period of time, we have to get rid of, you know, internal combustion
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That is now very seriously being challenged, and not by folks like me or you.
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When Elon Musk says you've got to make more oil, it kind of makes it a little interesting
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for the greenies to go out and say that, you know, it's all about climate, we have to
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No one on the right mind wants to go down that road.
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So I think we have to have policies in this country based on reality, not stuff of, you
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know, magic and make-believe and a narrative that I think has been, you know, has led us
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to this point where demagogues and very, you know, unsavory dictators like Vladimir Putin
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and like, you know, Maduro and others hold the balance of power by holding the energy which
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Well, so I mean, are we seeing any rumblings of reality coming from the East?
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Now, I know for Energy East, for example, it wouldn't help us right now unless it was
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Are we finally starting to set our sights farther down the road?
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Like, we understand that, you know, it would take years to get some sort of good energy
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corridor going, you know, connecting the country east to west, but can't we get started on
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this thing realistically, not regulating it to death, not trying to throttle it?
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And we're not seeing any of that discussion starting either, though.
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But then the main line, which is Energy East, is already built to Ontario.
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You sat around, you farted around, you did your nonsense.
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And you did the same thing for, you know, for Trans Mountain Pipeline.
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You wound up costing the taxpayer tens of billions of dollars that could otherwise go to,
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I don't know, programs that would help Canadians, especially in difficult circumstances.
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Instead, our virtue signaling, our desire to ignore reality, our desire to wish away that
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which is obvious, a little bit like the governments are taking the view that, you know, the sun
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I mean, if we want to be a bunch of flat earthers about this, that's fine.
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But perhaps you want to choose another job rather than leading a country, because what you've
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done here is led the country down a very dangerous path.
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It's incapable of maintaining its economic growth at a time in which prices have risen
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60 cents a litre just in the past, you know, two months alone.
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I don't see how we're going to get out of this unless someone finally has the gumption
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Yeah, I mean, there's no single item really of any kind of good we can point to that raises
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every single aspect of our standard or cost of living aside from energy.
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I mean, that one's a, you know, when it goes up, everything goes up.
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I mean, we're just, like I said, seeing the first tastes of the inflation.
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Once trucking companies, farmers, of course, producers, we're going to be in a great deal
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of trouble once those prices come all the way down to the consumer level.
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Trans Mountain, there's another one, as you said.
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They bought it because they'd cornered the company and pushed it too far, but that thing's
00:08:01.660
I mean, they keep saying it's under construction, but it should have been done a while ago.
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They'll be fired for even considering talking to us.
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Again, shouldn't we see some movement to expedite it?
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I mean, that won't help with domestic supply, but it'll bring in some income because we've maxed
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out our export capabilities and we could pay for, as you said, hospitals and all
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Let me make it really easy for people that are listening in here, Corey.
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If you open one pipeline, say the Trans Mountain expansion was open tonight, that $0.28 discount
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the Canadian dollar is getting versus the U.S. greenback is contributing to the inflation
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Open up a pipeline and you'd go back to the good old days of 2010, 2008, 2014, where the
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Canadian dollar was trading on par, sometimes stronger than the U.S. greenback.
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You'd be saving $0.28 a litre on the price of gasoline.
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You'd be paying $0.28 in what you're paying today.
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No amount of taxation, removal, or anything can do what that once did.
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We have sacrificed our status as a petroleum-producing country capable of sending our products that
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are desperately needed to a world that is lined up to say the most ethical nation that produces
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And despite the negativity and the disinformation, that alone would save every person driving a
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You multiply that by your Dodge Caravan, which takes 70 litres.
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Now, that's a $15 savings right from the get-go every single week.
00:09:52.200
Corey, this is a no-brainer, but obviously some people are conflicted with it.
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And it seems to me that if we don't want to build pipelines in this country, then be prepared
00:10:00.500
to accept a decrease in your standard of living because you have voted for it, especially
00:10:04.380
the folks around here in Eastern Ontario and in the GTA and around Toronto.
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It's a bitter harvest we're about to indulge in.
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It's the price of everything, most notably food, where we can't, there's no room for argument
00:10:22.360
Yeah, well, and the reality check is definitely here.
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I just, I wish I could hear more rumblings of voices like yours with people saying, well,
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Even from the, if we want to play the, well, we want to be good world players and help the
00:10:43.160
Well, the best way we could do that is getting good, clean, liquid, natural gas to these
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countries that are suffering in this energy crisis right now, or getting good ethically
00:10:53.920
And again, we, we aren't allowing any coastal access.
00:11:00.760
And I know that people don't like it, but I got to tell you, Corey, it's a little easier
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to make that argument now than it was two months ago.
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You know, the old expression, Tennyson, was it, to hear the truth, you've spoken twisted
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by days to make a trap for fools seems to ring very, very true here.
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I think we're getting more people listening and those who don't listen, those who think
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that they control the message, well, pox on their doors, but they're going to become increasingly
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And I would challenge, of course, my friends who I've worked with for 30 years in the mainstream
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media, good luck with continuing to try to suppress it.
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I had a CBC talk show host try to do that to me last week.
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And I said to him, I reminded him, name a single project in this country that can be built without
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Name to me any windmill or any photovoltaic, any solar panel that can be built without it.
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The fact of the matter is, and even Elon Musk recognizes this, oil may not be what you
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But at the end of all of this, it's the main reason why we prosper as a country.
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And we are moving ahead in a very clean way as a civilization.
00:12:06.520
And that's probably bad news to the bad news green bears out there.
00:12:13.460
It's from a commenter, Peter LaFontaine says, you know, can Dan comment on the green saying
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this is why we need to accelerate the expense of renewables?
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They're saying, well, this is actually evidence that we need to move harder on windmills and
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we need more solar and more, I don't know, goat power or whatever we're supposed to do.
00:12:30.640
But they're actually taking that tact rather than recognizing that maybe we need these
00:12:41.560
And sooner or later, they have to give their heads a shake because, frankly, they got it
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wrong, spectacularly wrong and dangerously wrong.
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And they've made the world a far more dangerous place.
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And they've created two problems, which is greater than their climate emergency or climate
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We have an energy crisis, a real one that's hurting people.
00:13:01.180
That's something that has never been discussed.
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And I know you're going to be in for a busy week and you already have been as people keep
00:13:17.760
So I, you know, but the discussion is not over, as we said, you know, we really got to
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make sure, OK, people realize there's a problem, but we've got to make sure they realize where
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And I appreciate you always speaking out in that front.
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You're the only among the few liberal, former liberal member of parliament that I enjoy
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I was one of the young ones 20 years, 30 years ago.
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So some of them are a little maximum, but there's a change.
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So where can people keep up with what you're doing, Dan, and find out more about you?
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The site often has blogs and this kind of information that gives people a bit of a heads
00:14:03.500
I've been a little busy of late, so you haven't seen as many.
00:14:08.720
I don't just talk about energy and say it's wrong or right or it's expensive.
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I actually try to do something about it by predicting those prices a few days ahead.
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And maybe along the way, this current form of the Liberal Party will do what I did, which
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was to give two energy rebates and maybe some help to Canadians rather than finding cute,
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Always a pleasure talking to you and keep up that good work.