The miracle of modern society, advocacy for affordable energy
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Summary
In this episode of the Global Energy Show, I sit down with the President and CEO of Quest Air Energy and Executive Director of the Modern Miracle Network, Michael Binion, to discuss the role the network has played in the fight against the carbon tax.
Transcript
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i'm here on the floor of the global energy show in calgary with the president ceo of quest air
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energy and executive director of the modern miracle network michael binion uh michael i've
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known you uh quite a while now yeah that's true you're actually uh one of the guys helped show
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me the ropes when i first came to calgary uh you know so in addition to your your own company
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quest here you've been running the modern miracle network uh for how many years now it's coming up
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10 years 10 years um i mean i've always teased you that it's no uh that when i tell people about it
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i have to tell them it's not a christian uh wish network for sick kids it's uh it's uh it's an
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organization that has great work in promoting uh fossil fuels uh and the advocacy work around it
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as a key part of the western economy um you guys have really um uh really set your roots down
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across the industry uh to the point where now there's even an influencers uh component i think
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for all three days here of the global energy show uh and it's just open today uh you want to tell us
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a bit about what role uh your organization the modern miracle network played there sure i'd love to well
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first of all you're right you you used to work for me and look look where you are now it's incredibly
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impressive what you've been able to do with western standard so thank you uh thank you what
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you're doing for everybody it's important that we have western standard as an independent news
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organization in the west yeah so uh i'll just your reference uh modern miracle network i mean
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the modern miracle we refer to is the miracle of modern society which is of course it only comes
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through affordable energy i i actually say the opposite thing when people ask me for an evangelical
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society uh the charity or a children's charity i say we absolutely are i i i can see the argument
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because we think we help children and we are evangelical about that um we uh spreading the
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good word that's right and and and we're we're you know like you think what infant mortality and
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and equality and all the amazing things about our society uh this of course this of course is good
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for children um yeah i i think uh in general when we started there was really a movement for canada
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to become a leader a global leader in energy transition and there was a need to say the other
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side of the debate as we as we said at the beginning it was uh you know we're comparing the benefits of
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one kind of energy to the costs and impacts of another and and and only only great you know only
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even a grade three kid knows there's a that you know a benefit's better than an impact right so i said
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we need to have an adult conversation here but it was really to counter counter a movement today i think
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we're in a new position i think we've now got a situation where canadians in general believe that
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we are the best in the world at uh energy and resources i think we've got a government that at
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least is saying the right things about how we need to move forward and i think the global energy show
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has recognized advocacy now is about being for this as much as ways 10 years ago maybe it was being
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uh to show the other side now i think we need to push and make sure that we don't stall uh these
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projects as one of our people said today like we don't we don't want we don't want it to be you
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know places that projects go to die so i think advocacy is important as it's ever been but now
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we really need to be uh talking about the real benefits of of resources and oil and gas for
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canadians and i think the global energy shows recognize that and we're happy to be helping
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so your organization uh modern miracle network i think is one of the uh lesser known heroes in the
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fight against the carbon tax uh right you know i remember uh even pre-modern miracle network when
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the very first died that no one was even talking about carbon taxes i guess until until stephen dion
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right i work like time a bit of a time warp now we're going back that far but uh you know he had put
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it forward and you know you had helped shape the fight against that in the canadian taxpayers federation
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before you were over at the modern miracle network uh but the modern miracle network played a big role
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in giving different organizations uh you know tools to fight that and it was a very long-term
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fight that has now been not entirely one we still have the industrial carbon tax uh but there has been
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a decisive turn if we look one federal election ago every single major uh federal political party
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including the conservatives were running on a carbon tax actually the conservative carbon tax i argued at
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the time was even worse than the liberal one yeah uh it was it was nuts uh this election everybody but
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the green party was against the carbon tax and even the green party was a bit sheepish about it right
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that is um you know if to compare it i guess in a sense uh to the fight against deficits in the
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1990s you went from a point in the 80s where every party supported deficits to then the early 90s
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every party supported spending reductions tax cuts uh balanced budgets and so we've had a just a total
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shift on that front um i know your organization you know you know you know it's not the kind of the
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spokesman in the public for it but it's kind of arming other people the advocates in the public for it
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uh yeah let's talk about the uh you know how you guys waged that war against the carbon tax and how
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successful you think it's been yeah i mean it's one of the things in terms of advocacy that's been
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one of the most successful things that i've been involved in for sure and of course as you know
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i was with the canadian taxpayers for 15 years um the i will tell people that do give me credit
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full full credit is corporate nights press progress the tiee environmental defense environmental
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defense has called me one of canada's top climate villains and it's all almost all they're all badges
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to wear i suppose in a sense right but but of interest for me of interest in terms of the success
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we've had and and we were arguing what we were really arguing against was a carbon tax that was
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extraordinarily expensive and extraordinarily inefficient contrary to what the 332 economists
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said like as i always said marx and engels were economists too right so uh they were just so wrong
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and and we waged a campaign at multiple levels i wrote a peer-review paper and policy options
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uh or light peer review i should call i wrote papers in in c to c journal we also funded and
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i was a reviewer on on papers by navius by navius by actual studies economic studies uh by conference
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board of canada two studies we did and then we also um armed people with hey look look look at the
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actual facts of just how inefficient this is contrary to what they're all saying all economists agree
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guess what all economists didn't agree so it was extraordinarily successful campaign as i said i've been
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well recognized by by people like environmental defense of interest my position and our position on this
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which was really that we need to gear up the private sector to deal with climate issues like that's not
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have the government run it through through carbon taxes that get invested into you know r d by government
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we we need to have a system that will actually motivate the private sector to deal with this problem
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and as it turns out my position to that we started with 10 years ago that environmental defense is i'm a
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climate criminal for is pretty darn close to what mark carney is saying today and i don't think
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anybody's saying he's a climate criminal and i'm certainly not so uh i i think it in terms of as your
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point the success of that campaign which we really did initiate when the liberals brought that carbon tax
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and we were we were there at the beginning of that we were the ones that funded all the counter studies
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and i think at the end of the day to have our position be not the same but very close to mark
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carney is a huge policy victory well it's been a pretty decisive turn uh politically and largely on
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the policy front i think the main obstacle on the carbon tax front is now the industrial carbon tax
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remains and i mean carney has he has proven to be a better politician than i would have expected for
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someone who's new to elected politics but he's not new to the political arena he's that's for sure
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a long time uh and he's very he's incredibly adept at saying something that doesn't seem to really
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anger either side right an issue he seems to be very good at that um and so when he was and he signed
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this kind of big executive fake uh fake executive order as if he was trump uh i love when they're like
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all right you guys are trumpifying canadian politics like well we didn't have executive orders
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until like a week ago right yeah so okay um but you know he's signing his executive order to get rid
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of the carbon tax uh but he was saying they're going to move the carbon tax
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more towards the industry so i i took that as meaning probably does that mean an increase to the
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industrial carbon tax because the industrial carbon tax is still there consumer carbon tax the part we
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feel most visibly that's gone so that's probably a better voter facing issue but the carbon tax itself
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makes the economy uncompetitive right uh but i don't think the liberals actually think that the
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liberals actually never thought the consumer carbon tax was a bad thing they just eventually
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recognized it was a politically doomed thing so they jettisoned it for pragmatic political purposes
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not for any purposes of principle uh what do you think is going to happen on the industrial carbon tax
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such an interesting time right now because before the trump announcements on tariffs and so on and so
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forth we were really advocating for a reform of of carbon pricing to match what was happening in
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the united states where there would have been a carbon price that would have incented private
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business who we think would have done the job way more effectively and efficiently than government ever
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could uh so we were really arguing for that and now of course the united states they've got rid of
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their carbon price they their inflation reduction act of 85 dollars u.s a ton california still got
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it's a state run but that would be it yeah so maybe a few other states yes at least from a federal
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point of view let's call it right yeah so from a federal point of view they've now got rid of it
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and so now i actually haven't sort of taken the tie it's also it's also it's all you know a lot of this
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stuff is also 2024 right i mean and we've only had a couple of months of 2025 um and so i in all honesty i
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i i'm looking at you know what what is the right policy for canada now on an industrial carbon tax
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for sure it needs to be reformed because the problem with it the way it is today
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any company that like our company for example we've invented a carbon capture technology
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well how if i go and capture carbon how do i get paid for it i'm not a big emitter i i don't qualify
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for any of these programs so there's a fundamental flaw with the way it is that a company could invent
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a new carbon capture technology and not know how to get paid for it right so in the system i'd have
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to go find some big company to buy it from me type of thing right so there's a fundamental flaw
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with it but the bigger question now is as trump gets rid of 85 a ton cost on their economy
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and adds tariffs onto our economy we need to start really thinking can we you know what what industrial
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carbon tax can we carbon price can we actually afford and and i would and i would say that's an
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important thing for us to be thinking about right now well i mean cardi's talked about i think the term
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he used was carbon border adjustment i mean yeah i mean there's a reason people hate politicians
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is they don't speak in english but i mean it's benefit i'm not i'm not against that i'll tell you
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why he's using he's using the economic vernacular but here's how we'll all understand it is i thought
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it was carbon tariff yeah uh okay but but but the carbon the border adjustment taxes which was which
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was initially proposed um proposed some years ago um and and the the idea of it is like our gst so
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you'll remember the debate between the manufacturers and sales tax and the gst no i was uh i was four
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well i remember so the whole point was the that that the gst was pay it was was payable only in
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canada so if i manufactured something in canada and i export it i get my gst back yeah the old tax
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i paid the tax and now i'm trying to compete with somebody in america i pay the tax they don't
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yeah so what carbon with the the if you want to think about it in those terms what he's really
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saying is i'll pay the carbon tax in canada but if i export i get it back okay that's what border
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adjustment tax okay i mean if that's that's a more charitable reading of it and i i would certainly
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hope that i hope that's what it means yeah because i i was looking at it from a perhaps less
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charitable uh view which is not always correct uh that they were going to start throwing carbon taxes
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on imports coming in oh they'll do that too just like the gst so it went on imports it works the
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opposite because under the old manufacturers and sales tax somebody from japan could sell something
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in canada not pay the manufacturing tax and they'd compete against the canadian business that was
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so the gst fixed all that problem because if you import into canada you pay the gst but it's the
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export out you get it back yeah so it would still mean higher carbon tax in canada carbon tariff
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costs on canadians i guess the answer would be to just get rid of it yeah if we if we want to be
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very competitive with the united states if you if you if all you're worried about is is competitiveness
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the clear answer is get rid of all of these taxes we're we we're going to struggle enough to compete
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with american businesses given that there's these new tariffs if we're elbows up that would seem to be
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the obvious solution right but if you know that that's let's let's be clear lots of people are still
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concerned about global environmental impacts and so on and so forth and i'm not and i'm not saying
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they're wrong to be concerned about it i mean there's there's a lot of there's there's global
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there are global environmental issues i'm concerned about right and so uh if you where's the balance
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there in terms of being purely focused on competitiveness but still trying to do what you
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can for the for the for the environment right uh well let's switch gears a bit back to kind of
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where the conversation started from uh the role the bottom miracle network and the global energy
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show here um well i've been coming to this for a few years you've been coming to this event a lot
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longer than me uh but i i see you know this a whole new component added to this yeah there's
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there's the uh well there's the executive stuff which is more business focused there's political
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speakers here uh but then there's a whole other wing added to this on kind of those in advocacy
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and influence around uh the energy sector i mean it's not strictly uh car uh hydrocarbon based here
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it's dang there's literally korean nuclear guys over there and all sorts of stuff but i mean this is
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calgary's dominantly oil gas right um uh do you think what does that say about uh kind of how the
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mainstreaming of pro canadian western canadian energy uh advocacy as kind of a pushback if you
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look back 10 years it's purely end goals it was it was all one side and it was against it was damn near
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unanimous uh so it seems a lot more diverse today to the point where there's a three-day conference on
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this stuff here yeah yeah it's it's it's extremely interesting what you're saying the the the
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cultural shift um and and the what what what's acceptable to say and and that the silent majority
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isn't so silent anymore and i mean all these all these kind of changes we you know we'd like to think
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that you know a lot of that happened because of events we think that a lot of that also happened
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because of advocacy that would that people did start people that modern miracle network works with us
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so we're an industry association but we we coordinate with groups that are helping to take
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the oil and gas and and canadian resources generally forestry mining we're we're really a pro resort
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canadian resource organization and we're working with all these different groups to take that message
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to canadians and i think that you know i i think the one of our core main messages
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to counter the 2015 canada has the dirtiest oil in the world if you'll remember that
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everybody everybody knew that because everybody said that right we had neil young coming up here
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and all that you know so if you imagine here we are 10 years later and the message that we started
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with in our group of canadian you know canadian canada is the best in the world it has really
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been one of the most viral messages that i've ever been involved with it it it it it activated the
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silent majority those people who said there's something wrong here but i don't know what the
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counter argument is it it it got a lot of other people thinking oh well maybe it's not as so
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one-sided debate as we thought and then of course the ukraine war happened i will cry and that all
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of a sudden people understood oh energy security is an issue uh we've seen these incredible blackouts
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in spain and other countries that have gone way too far into interruptible power uh we've seen the
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trump tariffs and all of a sudden you know this special relationship with the united states is what
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we what we thought it was maybe we need to be thinking about our economic and energy security here
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in canada too so all of these major events uh have also played into but i i think i think
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they played into a cultural milieu where the conversation has already started to change
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i agree well uh is there anything else you wanted to add uh no i i i just will finish i just
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keep up the great work uh we really need independent media in this country oh i appreciate
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that very much thank you all right well that's uh michael binion he is president and ceo
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of quester energy and the executive director of modern miracle network thank you there yes thank you