Western Standard - Smith shreds Guilbeault over Suncor comments, emissions cap

00:00:00.000 Thanks for coming in, Sean. We've got some interesting times happening here between Ottawa

00:00:04.000 and Alberta. Yeah, thanks, Corey. Yeah, well, there's been kind of a war of words in the

00:00:10.720 Twittersphere. I don't know what you call it these days, the exosphere,

00:00:14.160 between Premier Daniel Smith and Environment Minister Stephen Gibault.

00:00:19.760 Pretty much started when he came to Calgary in July, followed up with the electricity regulations.

00:00:27.360 And just this week, he traveled all the way to China and instead of criticizing the Chinese for

00:00:35.920 their emissions, which amount to about a third of all the greenhouse gas emitted in the world,

00:00:42.720 he took a shot at Suncor for selling off its renewables business and said it warrants an

00:00:48.080 emission cap. Yeah, and I mean, the announcement that Suncor, you know, an oil company was going

00:00:52.480 to remain an oil company. It came out about a week or two weeks ago, perhaps. I mean,

00:00:56.800 when they formally, they've been kind of shedding some of those renewables for a little while,

00:00:59.760 but this isn't really big news. Why did Gibault choose right now to suddenly go on about Suncor?

00:01:08.080 That's a really good question. I think it's because he's going to come out with the emissions cap.

00:01:13.920 So this is going to be the next shoe to drop. Apparently, it was supposed to have been released

00:01:19.680 already and it's been delayed. So my thought is probably within the next week or so after he

00:01:26.080 gets back from China and before he goes jetting off to Dubai for the COP, I'm not even sure what

00:01:33.360 it is, COP 28 summit, that these are going to drop and then he's going to hop on an airplane and

00:01:40.320 get out of town as fast as he can. Well, the irony of this, this summit happening in Dubai too,

00:01:45.280 where they don't care. They're pumping the oil out with mad abandoned over there and they're more

00:01:49.360 than happy if the Canadians are stupid enough to shut in their own resources. 1.00

00:01:52.400 I tend to agree. I think there's a lot of virtue signaling going on with the sheiks over there 1.00

00:02:00.480 because they want to pump more oil and be seen to be good corporate citizens, national citizens or

00:02:07.760 whatever while they're doing it. Yeah, host that summit. There we go. We're good guys. I mean,

00:02:13.200 never mind all that oil we're putting out, which nobody should mind the oil they're putting out.

00:02:16.880 But I mean, isn't it really demonstrates the futility of Canada always having to play the boy scout?

00:02:22.720 And meanwhile, he's paying lip service to some of the worst offenders on the planet being China 1.00

00:02:26.880 and some of the Middle Eastern producers. Well, Monsieur Gibault in his previous press statements has

00:02:34.160 actually bragged about Canada being the first mover and setting an example for all these other

00:02:42.160 countries in the world, you know, to presumably follow us, even though China under the Paris Accord

00:02:49.520 has a 2060 deadline to reach net zero and India is 2070. And between the two of them, they are half of 0.78

00:02:57.760 all the global emissions are in the world. And we're at 1.6% of the global emissions,

00:03:02.720 I believe. Something like that. And we're supposed to hit it by 2035.

00:03:06.160 Right. And Suncor is about 2% of that 1.5%. Yeah. So globally speaking, even though the

00:03:15.040 world's largest oil sands producer, we're talking tenths of a percentage point. But the economic impact,

00:03:22.320 I mean, if we, you know, when they keep talking, we want to transition, we want to get out, we want to

00:03:26.080 lose the oil and gas and in Canada. I mean, it provides a massive resource for the federal

00:03:31.520 government. I mean, people seem to forget that some of the supporters in Toronto or Montreal might

00:03:35.680 not realize, but a lot of these social programs they're enjoying are due to this oil and gas

00:03:41.040 being generated out here. Well, they've got a rude awakening coming because I think that the policy of

00:03:47.120 the federal government is actually to make oil production so expensive that it just becomes an

00:03:53.200 un-economic proposition and producers will basically be forced to leave it in the ground.

00:04:00.400 But what that's going to do for anybody who has home heating oil down east, anybody who

00:04:06.000 drives a car and people are still going to have to drive a car even after the EVs take over,

00:04:12.080 you're going to be looking at, I saw one forecast today, 300 bucks a barrel for oil.

00:04:16.320 Yeah. If it costs that much to pull up with the bottom line is the cost of renewables. If we went

00:04:22.640 to that as a sole source of energy, it wouldn't be far behind the oil and gas, especially if you got

00:04:27.440 rid of the oil and gas. I mean, we're all going to take a hard, hard hit here.

00:04:30.880 Well, and it's the only way to really encourage, like when they talk about the transition, the only way to

00:04:35.360 encourage the transition is not so much to make the renewable energy cheaper, but to make the conventional

00:04:42.560 energy so expensive that the renewable stuff is cheap in comparison.

00:04:47.440 So Premier Smith doesn't sound like she's having any of this, though. I mean, she certainly responded

00:04:51.520 as we would have expected out of Daniel Smith.

00:04:54.640 Yeah, absolutely. I think she's flabbergasted. So she, in discussions, she's referenced her

00:05:03.600 environment with Mr. Rebecca Schultz as the gibault whisperer. And I think they're coming to the end of

00:05:09.200 their rope and like, really trying to deal with this guy. Because every time you take,

00:05:14.880 you seem like to take one step forward, it's like four or five, six steps backwards. And I don't know

00:05:20.880 how long they continue like this. Well, you can't reason with Gilboa. I mean,

00:05:26.000 maybe people will start realizing this, you don't look him up the picture of him manically grinning in an

00:05:31.280 orange prison jumpsuit as he's being taken away in handcuffs. Like this man's an extremist. He always has

00:05:37.920 been. We're not talking about, you know, an environmental activist who's been rational

00:05:42.800 over this time. This is a guy on the fringe and he's the most powerful environment minister in the

00:05:46.800 country. And what's ironic is that he's threatening to have the RCMP come after politicians like Smith

00:05:53.280 and Moe and have them hauled away in handcuffs and orange jumpsuits, you know, for keeping the lights

00:05:58.480 on in the middle of January. Well, you know, speaking as a guy who's written a book on pursuing

00:06:02.480 independence in the West, if they wanted to send the RCMP to start arresting Western politicians, I know it'd be

00:06:06.640 great for my book sales, but not very good for the stability of the country as a whole. I mean,

00:06:11.040 this is really is challenging unity and stability within Canada. I mean, yeah, Scott Moe, I mean,

00:06:17.040 this is in Saskatchewan where these battles are happening as well. It's just dangerous politics

00:06:22.640 going on right now. Absolutely. And, you know, there's for all the talk of separation that there's

00:06:28.880 been in this country, Quebec nationalism is more cultural based, Western nationalism is more economic

00:06:34.800 based. It seems to me that these climate policies are becoming the catalyst for the breakup of the

00:06:42.000 country. Trudeau is going to be the one who presides over the end of this federation, this confederation

00:06:50.080 that we know. Well, and some of it's just the politics. I mean, we can see the liberals are in a

00:06:53.200 bad position right now as far as the polls go. I mean, it could be, we're looking at potentially two

00:06:56.880 years before the next election. Anyways, a whole lot, we know a whole lot could change between now and then,

00:07:01.360 you know, nobody in the CPC should be popping champagne corks yet. You're in the lead, but

00:07:05.280 that can, that can evaporate quickly. And one of the tactics, the old one used by the liberals

00:07:11.440 with the senior Trudeau and his advisor, that old term, screw the West, we'll take the rest.

00:07:16.160 Playing the politics of regional division has always been an asset for the liberals, you know,

00:07:22.640 because what do they got to lose? They got two seats in Alberta, zero seats in Saskatchewan.

00:07:26.400 If they can make us look like a bunch of jerks, it tends to sell well in Toronto. 0.98

00:07:31.440 Well, even Paul Martin, I was really, I thought Paul Martin was a good finance minister, 0.97

00:07:36.720 but I was really disappointed when he became prime minister, because when he was down in the

00:07:39.840 pools, that's exactly what he did, was start kicking at the West and managed to somehow salvage 0.74

00:07:44.720 the minority government out of it. But I don't know, I'm hoping that the Trudeau liberals are forced

00:07:50.720 so far down that they're not going to be able to come back. But what really concerns me

00:07:54.960 is the damage that they're going to be able to do in two years with this wrecking ball that they

00:07:59.760 have flying around the world, imposing all these policy by fiat.

00:08:06.080 Well, an investment chill, I mean, really, as an international investor, even a domestic one,

00:08:11.680 when you see that sort of hostility towards an industry in the country, it's gonna be a heck of a

00:08:17.440 lot harder to convince you to open your wallet and invest in a capital project when it looks like

00:08:22.320 we've got the powers that be want to shut us down. Absolutely. And a lot of people don't realize

00:08:26.560 that about oil and gas is number one, how much money it takes just to maintain production, never

00:08:32.640 mind, increase it. And the lead times, the time, the amount of time that it takes, you know, to build

00:08:39.920 these oil sands plants, to get this stuff out of the ground, and build these markets and build these

00:08:45.600 pipelines and do all these other things that need to be done before you can sell one barrel of oil.

00:08:51.200 Well, something else, I mean, that really poked the stick in the hornet's nest, and that came

00:08:55.440 from the Alberta side of it, I'm kind of throwing like a curveball, we didn't speak on this. But

00:08:59.600 still, it's been a it's a part of this issue was the moratorium or the freeze on on renewable

00:09:05.280 permits for the next six months in Alberta that the Premier Smith's government imposed. I mean,

00:09:10.000 that certainly infuriated those who feel we're going to fully transition into renewables soon.

00:09:14.160 No matter you know, how you look at it, that will slow the development of these renewable projects to a degree.

00:09:19.200 Do you think, you know, that something's going to be resolved, some better regulations and so on,

00:09:26.320 and those projects are going to start getting rolling again?

00:09:28.480 Well, right now, it's kind of like a wild west. And Texas had this problem when it froze a couple

00:09:34.320 years. So here in Canada, when you have the natural gas wells and it goes down to 40 below,

00:09:38.560 you have these things called freeze offs. So there's a certain amount of production that gets

00:09:42.240 shut in just from the coal. And in Texas, obviously, they're not ready for it, they're not prepared.

00:09:47.040 And when their gas went down, and they had to rely on the renewables for their grid, it was just havoc,

00:09:53.520 like people were getting power bills over like 10s of 1000s of dollars. You know, and there's a very

00:10:00.640 real possibility that if you don't have that backup for all the renewable generation, that people want

00:10:08.160 to come online, that it is going to destabilize the grid.

00:10:12.720 Yeah, so it means not the renewables themselves that are problems, they worry about the dependence on

00:10:16.480 the renewables as a source, right? And especially when they're intermittent, by definition, they're

00:10:22.320 intermittent. And, you know, I compared this with our other colleague, Nigel Hannaford,

00:10:28.640 you know, so OPEC, Saudi Arabia, they drill wells, and then shut them in and just leave them there and

00:10:36.640 drill the capacity, right? Well, it's a lot like these windmills that only run 30% of the time. So

00:10:43.440 you're spending all this money to have an asset that really is only 30% efficient, and you can't rely on

00:10:51.680 it when it's not there, when you don't have the other stuff to back it up. And solar is horrific. I

00:10:57.360 mean, we're in the northern hemisphere, the time of year when we would need it the most as a backup

00:11:02.320 is often cloudy, and we only have about eight hours of daylight. So it's a very, very limited

00:11:06.800 generating source for us. Well, I'm kind of surprised that Alberta is actually one of the prime locations

00:11:12.880 in the country for solar. But there again, until you've got some kind of method of actually storing

00:11:20.160 the energy that is produced so that you can turn it on when the sun isn't shining at night,

00:11:26.080 when it's dark for 16 hours a day, then it probably isn't a very practical proposition to

00:11:33.760 relying on it as your main source of electricity. Has Suncor responded to this, or are they just kind

00:11:39.920 of keeping their head low and letting the politicians duke it out on this whole thing? I think they're

00:11:44.560 probably letting the politicians duke it out. They have enough problems with their own shareholders and

00:11:49.280 investors, which I think is one of the reasons why they made that statement to begin with.

00:11:53.920 And they've got nothing to be gained. You know, oil companies tend to kind of try to keep a low

00:12:00.960 profile in these political things. But you know, there again, it goes back to the investment, because

00:12:05.120 if you scare away all of all this investment, you know, that accomplishes more than what Jibo can ever do

00:12:12.400 on his own. Yeah, and he's more than happy to scare it off. He knows that. I mean,

00:12:15.840 he's not stupid. He's crazy, which is dangerous. We're all going to pay a price. Well, crazy times 1.00

00:12:25.840 we're living in. But as I said earlier, I think it's just warming up right now. I mean,

00:12:29.120 Gabo's in China, the Alberta legislature hasn't, you know, hit its new session yet with the premier,

00:12:34.720 you know, newly elected. Now she's going to feel a lot more, I think, confident in taking stances.

00:12:39.520 Now she's been through an election. Nobody can say she doesn't have a mandate. 1.00

00:12:42.160 And of course, the parliament's going to go back into session too. So I think we're just seeing

00:12:46.560 the first volleys in this fight right now. Yeah, I think so too. And I've been quite impressed

00:12:51.680 with Premier Smith and how she's handled the file. Apparently, the electricity one,

00:12:57.360 she has taken it. It is her. And I would imagine that emissions cap will be. She's kept her cards fairly

00:13:06.320 close to her chest. You know, at the same time, while keeping all those options open, the Sovereignty

00:13:11.680 Act, constitutional challenges, and, you know, but at the same time, being very emphatic and very clear

00:13:19.520 that these are unrealistic, they're unachievable, and they will not be implemented by 2035. And certainly

00:13:27.840 not the way that, you know, the Liberal government thinks that they will.

00:13:33.200 Well, certainly gives you lots to cover, and it gives me lots to rant about. I appreciate you coming

00:13:39.040 in to explain kind of what's been going on with this fight that's unfolding, I mean, from China to

00:13:43.680 Alberta at this point. I mean, we've bypassed Ottawa for the time being. Right. And as I said,

00:13:49.360 it's probably only going to get worse. So we should all be keeping a close eye on this. So thanks for coming in to

00:13:54.720 talk to us today, Sean. And we'll have you in again soon. All right. Thanks a lot, Corey.

00:13:59.040 You can become a Western Standard member for just $10 a month or $99 a year for unlimited access.

Western Standard - September 05, 2023

Smith shreds Guilbeault over Suncor comments, emissions cap

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