Dan McTeague is the President of the Canadians for Affordable Energy (CAFE) and a former Liberal MP who served as Environment Minister in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In this episode, he talks about the Liberal government's plan to get us to net zero carbon emissions by 2035 and why he doesn't think it can be done.
00:00:00.000Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
00:00:22.340of the Western Standard. With me today is one-time Liberal MP Dan McTeague. Now he is
00:00:29.940the President of the Canadians for Affordable Energy. And we're going to be talking about
00:00:37.480the plans of the Liberal government to make us net zero by 2035. I think it can't be done.
00:00:45.040I'm going to ask Mr. McTeague whether he thinks it can be done. We're going to have some fun
00:00:49.460with us. Welcome to the show, Dan. Great to be here, Nigel. Thanks for having me. It's an honor
00:00:54.620to be here at the Western Standard and Hannaford show. Hopefully, we'll do more of this down the
00:00:59.340road. Well, Dan, it's an honor to have you too. I don't think everybody would necessarily know
00:01:04.500that for 18 years, you were a member of parliament. You were actually a liberal member of parliament.
00:01:09.580And I have to ask you, before we even get into this, is this the liberal party you knew?
00:01:15.960Not at all. It's completely foreign to anybody who spent time with the Liberal Party. And by the way, my lineage to the party goes back to 1974. When I was a 12 year old, I was licking envelopes for the Honorable Hugh Faulkner, the real environment minister back in the day.
00:01:31.640I worked again for Paul Cosgrove in 1978 and 1980, again in 1984, and ran in 1993 and was successful after running campaigns for several other liberals.
00:01:45.220So my tenure in the party is extraordinarily deep, and I can say with absolute certainty this is not the same liberal party, balanced, pragmatic party at the center that try to straddle issues and try to find consensus, a common purpose.
00:02:01.640in its policies it is very much a left-wing construct and i would classify it as more of a
00:02:07.080a left-wing branch of the ndp than it is of course the liberal party that i knew and that so many of
00:02:12.200us have come to know as the pragmatic party of the center so uh no not at all and i'm not
00:02:16.840afraid to say so and to dispute its legitimacy as the liberal party dan that that kind of confirms
00:02:24.760the suspicions that a lot of us have had out west for quite a long time i'm i'm glad to see that it's
00:02:30.280penetrating in the east as well but anyway one of the things that this this progressive liberal
00:02:37.440party has been trying to do is to take us to a net zero carbon emissions by 2035 and one of the
00:02:46.000ways they mean to do that is to switch us all over to driving electric vehicles by that time
00:02:51.900what a lot of people don't realize is that they are phasing that in early and that as soon as
00:02:58.940and I need to consult my notes here, in less than 18 months, by law,
00:03:05.360one-fifth of all new passenger cars sold in Canada have to be electric,
00:03:11.180and I think by 2030, which is only, you know, this could be your next car,
00:04:26.540So for, you know, planners, central planners working the bureaucracy in Ottawa, once former activists for various organizations, you know, scaling the CN Tower or, you know, Ralph Klein's house.
00:04:40.120The reality is that these people should not be in a position of advocating any type of timeline because they can't possibly meet it.
00:04:46.300And by any realistic measure, which, of course, demonstrates the extent to which this Liberal Party has become bereft of reality and, as I said earlier, pragmatism, they're imposing ridiculous goals that cannot possibly be met.
00:05:00.000In fact, this morning, even the parliamentary budget officer said, not only are you not going to reach those goals, but right now for most Canadians to reach that goal of 60%, as you mentioned in 2030, you know, you're going to have to ensure that the price of electric vehicle drops 31%.
00:05:16.360That isn't going to happen, not without the massive subsidies it takes to build, not without the massive subsidies it takes to create infrastructure, not without the massive subsidies to incent people to actually drive these things.
00:05:27.280The reality is that even if they were to get them, sell them as used, they're not worth it.
00:05:31.380And we well know now that most common sense manufacturers globally, auto manufacturers, are walking away from this in droves.
00:05:38.940Nigel, I live no more than three kilometers away from the Ford plant here in Oakville.
00:05:42.740This was a billion bucks given to that company, federal and provincial money.
00:05:51.720Instead, they're bringing in what people really want, the F-250 super duty.
00:05:55.220And that's going to start in 2026, not EVs.
00:05:58.100This reality, I think, is now starting to shower liberals and those out there who believe in their own press releases that somehow they can make these things happen with massive amounts of borrowed money and without infrastructure to support, as you mentioned, not just infrastructure to produce energy, but also to distribute that.
00:06:15.480Who's going to build and get the distribution boxes?
00:06:17.780What kind of mining are we going to need to achieve those goals?
00:06:20.100The reality is it's not practical. And it's the kind of stuff of, you know, of fantasy that I think magic and make believe is no way to conduct public policy. And that's one of the reasons I believe the federal Liberal Party and its planners are doomed in the next 12 months. And there will be a replacement in government where common sense once again remains the stead in Canada.
00:06:41.440Well, that point you made actually about the secondary distribution system, it's not just the big overhead lines that take power lines that take the power.
00:06:51.100It's also the stuff on the ground that takes the power from the transformer into your own house.
00:06:57.060The little community I live in is a transformer serving 40 homes.
00:07:00.540The first guy who wants to plug in an electric vehicle is going to be all right.
00:07:05.700The third one, you know, it's going to affect people's freezers.
00:07:08.560So I have real, you know, that's not, he's not going to be a popular guy.
00:07:13.080So, but look, this, if I'm not an expert in this, you are.
00:07:19.060If between us, however, we can see that this is an impossible dream,
00:07:24.280is it the case that they don't see this in central government or that they see it
00:07:31.120and just don't know what else to do so blindly barrel on?
00:07:34.740I think it's a lack of, you know, it's a question of look, don't look before you leap. And they've done that. They've done so because in the United States, the Biden administration now on its way out, at least Biden, from what I can see, made a decision to invest trillions of dollars in terms of the Inflation Recovery Act, Reduction Act.
00:07:53.660And what that basically meant was the federal Canadian government would have to, with the provincial government hopping on board and other governments across the country,
00:08:02.180would use this as an opportunity to, as it were, pillage the finances of this country in order to achieve goals that are simply impossible to meet.
00:08:12.540Look, spending $52 billion or committing that kind of money to get $19 billion from investments from automotive manufacturers isn't going to work.
00:08:22.600And it's not a very good, you know, it's not a very good way of conducting public policy.
00:08:26.480If, in fact, you're incenting people two to one for every dollar they're investing, you're giving them back, too.
00:08:31.280I don't know whose math or what financial creative juices go into the minds of those who have made this idea, but it's an impossible demand.
00:08:39.860And it's based really on what I think is a very undefined, I would almost say fraudulent discussion about what net zero really is.
00:08:48.700If you're saying that carbon is bad for the world, when in fact it's not a pollution, it's in fact the giver of life, it provides the greening and the quality of our life, if you're saying that you want to get rid of that and at the same time bankrupt nations and force people into vehicles and to do things that they can't do and to somehow stunt growth and development, I mean, that's a recipe for disaster.
00:09:12.520And those who are advocating are absolutely mad and insane and have no business in public policy, nor should they be anywhere near advocating changes that I think are leading everyone to the conclusion this country is going in a very wrong direction.
00:09:25.080Okay, now, you mentioned a moment ago that you reminded us that there's an election coming up in next year,
00:09:32.800and there could be a change of government.
00:09:35.400Now, one of the things that we know about big business is that once they get committed to a certain course of action,
00:09:41.880it's like the oil tanker analogy, it takes a lot to turn it around.
00:09:46.500and can you conceive of a situation in which big business is pleased enough to see a different
00:09:56.460government with better ideas but doesn't even move the wheel doesn't even try to turn because
00:10:02.580they are afraid that the investments that they make today or next year four years later would
00:10:08.880be at risk because of a return of whether it's the liberals or the NDP or somebody else altogether
00:10:14.300who has the same kinds of destructive ideas that you have just characterized as a disaster.
00:10:21.720Can't you rely on something new if there's a change of government?
00:10:25.560I think manufacturers are already signaling that they're walking away from this.
00:10:28.520I mean, Ford Motor Company is no small company.
00:10:31.760It has been a very significant, has a great, proud tradition.
00:10:37.680It's never asked government for loans or bailouts because they've gone bankrupt not once but twice,
00:10:42.500as Stellantis which is formerly Chrysler or as say GM has done these are companies that are with
00:10:48.920along with Mercedes Toyota the company I worked for for several years before being elected as
00:10:53.320a member of parliament in public relations said no listen we think that the best penetration would
00:10:58.260be 30 percent EV market that's it we are not going in that direction we're going to try to
00:11:03.440provide other solutions based around fossil fuels maybe even a bit of hydrogen who knows
00:11:07.860but they're not going to put their eggs in one basket Ford has said pretty much the same thing
00:11:12.140Unless they can produce a vehicle that makes money from the get-go, the moment that car drives off the lot with a new buyer, they're not going to invest in EVs no matter how many inducements the federal governments on both sides of the border are prepared to make.
00:11:26.060So I think it's become a fool's errand for those who did not look before they left, basically jumped into this without taking into consideration the long-term impacts.
00:11:35.220And that's not just the federal government. The provincial government in my province, for instance, has made similar silly commitments in order to try to prevent and to uphold what has been the strength of our economy, the automotive sector, while completely sacrificing, you know, the reality of consumers not being able to make ends meet and recognizing that the world does, in fact, want and will continue to need internal combustion engines as they meet a certain criteria that cannot be met by, you know, driving around electric toasters or whatever kind of widget.
00:12:05.220want to call it i mean it's not practical there's a reason why 100 years ago society walked away
00:12:10.100from the ev and it did so because it was not the kind of thing that one could commonly use day in
00:12:15.940day out batteries are not like internal combustion engines they do not have the density they do not
00:12:20.500have the fight the the energy properties at the same time they're also extremely extraordinarily
00:12:25.860you know cost efficient relative to any other alternative methods and so unless someone has
00:12:30.660you know deep pockets and money that grows off trees i know that's the ndp and the current liberal
00:12:34.980left ideology. But I think reality is starting to hit our politicians and planners right between
00:12:40.800the eyes and to recognize that they got this thing awfully wrong. I wonder if that reality really is
00:12:47.460hitting them between the eyes. I'm sure many of them have realized this, but the ideologues at
00:12:52.640the top, and I guess Mr. Gilboa would be one. Mr. Gilboa, who, by the way, famously within the last
00:12:57.260year, said that they weren't going to issue more money for road construction, as though the need
00:13:03.400for roads was going to disappear. I wonder if people who think as he does would be so distressed
00:13:10.820if there were less cars on the road and people didn't travel so far. Do you have any suspicion
00:13:16.840that there may be a strand of that thinking in their decisions? Very much so. There is an attempt
00:13:22.140to try to clamp down on our freedoms. These are bad news bears. These are Debbie Downers who do
00:13:27.460not like the fact the population has been very successful. Canada has been very wealthy, driven
00:13:31.660by its economic diversity, its energy diversity.
00:14:47.360It may not be lost on Western Canadians, but it's now becoming a growing reality in the
00:14:51.240eastern part of this country, especially in Ontario here, where people have had enough.
00:14:54.460They're fed up. And like Maritime Canada, where we saw an increase in carbon taxes last summer,
00:15:00.280it coincided, ironically, with the turn in the electoral fortunes of Mr. Polyev against Mr. Trudeau and his sidekick, Mr. Singh.
00:15:09.740I want you to just do a little informed speculation here, Dan.
00:15:14.600If the government were in a position, let's just say they won the next election.
00:15:21.280So we had another four years of Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Gilboa, and all who sail in them.
00:15:27.300And they are sitting there with this dilemma that in order for their grand plans to put more electric cars on the road to be realized,
00:15:40.480They're going to let Chinese imports in and basically kill Ford, Stellantis, and General Motors in Ontario.
00:15:51.960Is that a decision that they would make?1.00
00:15:54.700Well, I think it's a reality that they're going to have to confront because that's exactly what's happened.
00:15:58.660Look, China made a move 15, 18 years ago to move towards electric vehicles because it could not penetrate or break through the iron wall of North American and European internal combustion engines.
00:16:08.860not only to make them well they made them efficiently uh they're completely recyclable
00:16:13.740they're cost effective and they're the way of the future uh as long as we're prepared to continue
00:16:19.260to recognize that we need energy to uh to you know to grow our economies then that could be0.87
00:16:24.700met but china has no interest in going that road because they know that that road would take them0.94
00:16:28.940to a you know a certain dead end and now they have vehicles that they can't sell in their own country0.95
00:16:33.580so they want to dump them on the rest of the world i mean if we want these prices to come down we're1.00
00:16:38.140We're going to have to allow the Chinese to, you know, sell, you know, Jili.1.00
00:16:41.240They're going to have to sell their BYDs and their other, even their Teslas in order to bring these prices back to a level where I think people can find them as competitive as an alternative.1.00
00:16:58.460You know, Trudeau had to make a decision.
00:17:00.680Does he obey China or does he obey the United States?
00:17:03.160and given all the money that he's wasted building an infrastructure and industry that will not work
00:17:08.180and that these are simply dogs that will not hunt Canadians do not want electric vehicles
00:17:13.160yeah you got 10-15% of there who are always going to be trendy and willing to try anything
00:17:17.160provided they get some grift and some money but when it comes to the expense of an economy that
00:17:21.540is deteriorating there's no way under the sun any Canadian in their right mind will want to buy one
00:17:25.800of those things recognizing they don't live in California or Southern California they live in
00:17:30.080cold canada i don't need to say that to people in alberta but increasingly here in ontario anywhere
00:17:34.340north of toronto is cold yes well and that of course is the the fear here in alberta that
00:17:41.140if you have if 10 of your new vehicle fleet has to be electric then there's going to be a lot of
00:17:49.320competition for the 90 because for all the reasons you've just articulated nobody's going to want the
00:17:55.46010 except those people who kind of live two miles from their office and you know you could do it
00:17:59.920a golf cart i guess but uh for most people that's not the option you're living in i don't know grand
00:18:07.040prairie or a coom or something like that you've got 40 miles to go from where you live to where
00:18:13.760you work and it's 30 below and your little electric car even if it keeps running for
00:18:20.480that length of time you're going to be frozen like an icicle when you get there so they're
00:18:23.920not going to want to buy the ev but for every nine people there's got to be one and then in 20
00:18:32.00030 for it it's it's 60 40. so what's this going to you were in the car business what's this going to
00:18:39.680do to the price of new cars or second-hand cars remain high price of used vehicles be nonsense
00:18:46.960we know batteries don't last as long as internal combustion engines look i have a vehicle outside
00:18:50.880a 2003 chevy uh silverado 5.3 liter engine it's going to go to 600 700 000 kilometers as long as
00:18:58.400they keep the oil changed every uh five six thousand kilometers the same cannot be said for
00:19:02.880your batteries and it depends really if we're talking the lithium battery by the way an invention
00:19:07.840that came from the oil sector itself exxon developed that technology many many generations
00:19:12.800ago but if anybody believes that that's the way we're going to see our future forget it
00:19:17.040your mining, your agriculture, your heavy lifting, your airlines, your trains, nothing is going to,
00:19:23.900they might run a hybrid, but they're certainly not going to run straight EV. And to suggest,
00:19:28.520as some have, that we have the infrastructure necessary to accommodate that massive increase
00:19:34.040is delusional beyond comprehension. Those who are suggesting this aren't just dreamers. These
00:19:40.400people are insane, and we ought not to be following them. If anything, I think the next
00:19:44.580government is going to have to spend four years sifting through the debris and the damage
00:19:47.880of what is left by a government that had no option but to simply say we're going to spend
00:19:53.240public money we're going to indebt the nation to the point that it becomes apparent I think to
00:19:58.800everyone except for our bond rating agencies who should be downgrading Canada's credit I'm not
00:20:03.240saying that because I want that to happen I just think that they're so woke they don't recognize
00:20:07.780you cannot use the CPP to leverage the amount of debt this country has has has has incurred
00:20:14.340I say that as a Liberal member of Parliament because we had to fight that massive debt.
00:20:18.260We did a lot of very unpopular things to get that debt under control.
00:20:21.480And if people think this is a joke, just wait until it only takes one credit agency to come out and say Canada's credit rating is not worthy.
00:20:30.740We better be selling a hell of a lot more oil and natural gas in order for this country to pay off the massive debts that has incurred in this flight of fantasy,
00:20:38.360believing that we could hopefully go down this road of ESG, you know, net zero, the great reset,
00:20:44.920and bring about this idea that everybody should be driving, you know, electric toasters. Sorry,
00:20:50.220electric vehicles. It's the same thing. Let me ask you this. We're sort of coming to the end of
00:20:59.260our time. But I would put it to you, Dan, that if you care about freedom, and you said you did
00:21:07.500about five minutes ago, you talked about the damage to personal freedoms. I would say the
00:21:13.620ability to jump in your car and go wherever you want without any permission from anybody
00:21:20.600is one of the foundational definitions of freedom. And it's perhaps a lot more useful than a vote
00:21:29.920in the sense that it's something you do every day. What do you think of that as a definition
00:21:36.620of freedom and secondly it is one of the pleasant things we do at the weekends we jump in the car
00:21:43.900and we go somewhere we go to the mountains we go skiing we go for a drive around the lakes we go
00:21:50.220for a you know we go to visit a friend who lives 100 miles away well transportation we will still
00:21:57.500be able to do that yeah i think nigel i think transportation is an integral part of our lives
00:22:03.340in our society not just to connect with each other but also to have that freedom to move around
00:22:08.540the government has made no secret of the fact the federal government that it wants 15-minute cities
00:22:12.620that it does want to control how much you drive how much you eat what you eat there's a whole
00:22:16.700litany of things that go into this rubric of net zero the fact as i mentioned earlier these are
00:22:21.980real depressing people who believe that society you know has should not advance should not grow
00:22:27.580and should have somehow be constrained because uh we're doing inordinate damage to the to the
00:22:32.860environment the reality is far different than that and i think we're doing we're far more
00:22:37.900environmentally responsible that's a word i don't hear a lot of liberals talk about these days this
00:22:41.740liberal government they only want to talk about co2 and carbon they don't want to talk about
00:22:45.980other environmental issues remediation uh what's needed to uh to to resolve to improve our air
00:22:51.580quality or the health of canadians the quality of our lakes our rivers instead it gives permits to
00:22:57.100cities like montreal to go dump sewage into the uh into the great lakes and into the st lawrence
00:23:02.300river look i think they've got it all backwards there isn't a single thing that these people have
00:23:07.340touched they have the minus touch in reverse everything they've touched has turned to garbage
00:23:11.980and i think that's the problem is that it's going to take a long time to repair and get these things
00:23:15.900back up and running but make no mistake limiting your ability to exercise a quality of life that
00:23:21.980is enviable around the world is something they want to go after and it's the result of that that
00:23:26.060that I think this Liberal government and its coalition friends in the NDP
00:23:30.560are doomed for political annihilation in the not-too-distant future.
00:24:19.020And for that reason, it is policymakers who have had an uneven hand in determining and shaping what is a very dark future for most Canadians.
00:24:26.420It's not Canadian. It's certainly not the dream that many Canadians had hoped for.
00:24:30.580And I want to be, you know, like everyone else, provide an aspirational future that resets this country,
00:24:37.060puts it back on the right track and gives the next generation an opportunity to benefit from the vast menu of energy options this country has,
00:24:45.600which, by and large, are world-class, very, very much leading, very environmentally conscious,
00:24:50.860but at the same time taking into consideration what is important to most people, affordable energy.