Western Standard - January 13, 2023


Federal government just transition policy


Episode Stats


Length

6 minutes

Words per minute

149.15051

Word count

913

Sentence count

72

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Justin Trudeau wants to move Canada's energy sector away from oil and gas to clean energy, but is it a good thing or a bad thing? And what kind of benefits will it bring to the economy and the people who depend on it?

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 .
00:00:00.000 You've probably heard about the federal government's just transition policy,
00:00:06.900 a transition away from oil field work.
00:00:10.980 But I don't believe that it is just.
00:00:14.380 If Ottawa wants to take energy workers earning $150,000 a year
00:00:19.100 and put them into jobs yielding half that,
00:00:23.060 you could call the transition a lot of things,
00:00:25.460 but certainly not any word that means fair, equitable, or just.
00:00:31.340 Yet that's what the Liberal government is planning to do now to Canada's energy workers. 0.95
00:00:37.300 A lot of them in Alberta, of course, but by no means all of them.
00:00:40.760 Nationally, oil and gas means, directly and indirectly,
00:00:44.500 more than half a million jobs to this country.
00:00:47.580 More than a third of them are outside Alberta.
00:00:51.040 Same with the money.
00:00:51.860 Oil and gas is worth nearly $140 billion to Canadian GDP.
00:00:57.680 But again, a lot of the money invested developing energy out West,
00:01:02.440 energy all Canadians need, is actually spent in central Canada.
00:01:07.360 And with the money, you're the jobs.
00:01:09.540 71,000 in Ontario, 20,000 in Quebec, more in the Atlantic provinces.
00:01:15.280 As I said, more than half a million Canadians depend on oil and gas
00:01:18.820 to pay their taxes and feed their families, just like the old bumper sticker said.
00:01:23.680 So if the just transition turns out to be unjust, it's a national problem.
00:01:28.440 So why do the Liberals want a transition anyway?
00:01:32.220 The official government line is that Canada must lead the world
00:01:35.680 in lowering carbon emissions, and to do that,
00:01:38.340 we have to move everything gas-powered, cars, trucks, home heating,
00:01:42.480 over to electrical power.
00:01:43.760 The transition then will be to green jobs.
00:01:48.560 So much for the official line.
00:01:50.480 The unofficial line, as we know, is that the oil sands must be phased out.
00:01:55.260 The Prime Minister said it, then said he misspoke.
00:01:58.120 But over the last seven years, Mr. Trudeau has been killing pipelines,
00:02:01.840 chasing tankers away from the West Coast, not the East,
00:02:05.000 using regulations to make it more expensive for oil and gas producers to operate,
00:02:09.560 and putting potentially valuable exploration lands out of reach in national parks.
00:02:16.420 So what does that look like to you?
00:02:19.400 It's a transition, all right.
00:02:22.320 But a just transition?
00:02:24.800 If you ever had any doubts about federal good faith,
00:02:28.040 keep in mind how Canadian gas producers were shut down
00:02:30.980 after they pointed out that the more Canadian gas they could sell to China,
00:02:35.500 the fewer coal-fired generators China would have to build.
00:02:39.700 Like, carbon dioxide is borderless.
00:02:41.980 Less carbon dioxide admitted worldwide is a net gain for all of us, right?
00:02:48.000 Well, in fact, shouldn't Canadian gas producers get green credits for doing that?
00:02:53.420 Not a chance for this government.
00:02:55.300 It's like they want to show the world they can make it work,
00:02:57.500 whether it has a global impact or not,
00:02:59.640 and if Canadians suffer, tough.
00:03:02.560 Is this for bragging rights in Davos?
00:03:05.620 Who knows?
00:03:06.400 You wonder sometimes.
00:03:07.260 So Justin Trudeau's just transition plan is going ahead.
00:03:12.560 It'll kill us here in Alberta, of course,
00:03:14.500 but for him, perhaps that's a small price to pay.
00:03:16.920 It's not like so many people here vote liberal.
00:03:19.760 Here's the thing, though.
00:03:20.540 Where are these green jobs, these great green jobs, going to come from?
00:03:25.900 The largest manufacturers of hydrogen-driven generators are not in Canada.
00:03:30.940 They're in Europe and they're in China. 0.99
00:03:33.020 Same goes for solar panels.
00:03:35.760 That could change, perhaps, if the government put enough money into it.
00:03:38.660 But why should they?
00:03:40.620 Trudeau's liberals chase away $150 billion in private investment for the oil patch.
00:03:47.280 But if we're not going to live in a world of brownouts without end, 1.00
00:03:51.000 they'll need to make massive investments of taxpayer funds in the green grid. 0.68
00:03:54.780 So there could be some jobs, perhaps, expanding the grid.
00:03:57.380 Maybe, but nobody seems to be doing much about it at the moment.
00:04:02.300 And the question, therefore, for something like 140,000 Canadians from Atlantic Canada to BC is
00:04:08.380 just transition?
00:04:11.000 Transition to what?
00:04:13.480 Breaking leaves?
00:04:14.360 In other words, just transition is just a fraud, a sugary cover for a bitter pill.
00:04:22.660 This is intended to hurt.
00:04:26.220 For the Western Standard, I'm Nigel Haniford.
00:04:30.660 The current Lethbridge feed grain prices are as follows.
00:04:33.720 Cash barley is down $2 at $4.35.
00:04:36.820 Feed wheat is unchanged at $4.42.
00:04:39.900 And corn is up $3 at $443 per ton.
00:04:43.760 In the milling wheat markets, March Minneapolis futures are up a penny at $9.13,
00:04:49.340 with local hard red spring bid for February movement at $11.55 per bushel.
00:04:54.920 In the oil seeds, nearby canola futures slipped to $1.20 at $841.20 per ton,
00:05:01.840 with delivered values for February movement at $18.85 per bushel.
00:05:07.660 In the pulse markets, nearby red lentil prices remain at $0.33 per pound.
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