Western Standard - October 28, 2021


Trudeau’s radical new environment minister prepares to kill the West’s energy sector


Episode Stats

Length

6 minutes

Words per Minute

191.29422

Word Count

1,314

Sentence Count

85


Summary

Justin Trudeau appointed environmental radical Stephen Gilball to the position of Environment Minister, and he wants to shut down Canada s hydrocarbon-based industries. Is this the answer Canada needs to be looking for? Or is this just more of the same?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The world's in the grip of an energy crisis.
00:00:02.280 We've had decades of well-meaning but naive energy transition efforts in developed nations,
00:00:06.800 and it's created a fragile world energy grid that's starting to falter today.
00:00:11.740 Germany was once a celebrated world leader in renewable energy.
00:00:15.420 Now coals return to their top spot as their source of electricity generation,
00:00:19.280 while electricity prices in Europe have risen 500%.
00:00:22.940 India and China, they're pumping up their coal production,
00:00:26.380 and they're in a bidding war right now for Russian natural gas.
00:00:29.060 Energy price spikes are feeding inflation,
00:00:31.640 and that's impacting the standard of living for the entire planet.
00:00:35.000 I mean, we've got a real problem. It's not even winter yet.
00:00:37.800 So where's Canada's leadership?
00:00:39.720 How is Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister Trudeau, responding to this looming energy catastrophe?
00:00:44.580 Is he going to help facilitate the production and export of our clean, ethical Canadian energy products?
00:00:49.920 You know, to help ease the burden on our European neighbors that are going to have a really painful winter?
00:00:53.880 Is he going to ease the regulations on our petrochemical sector
00:00:56.580 to help mitigate, you know, the inflationary pressures we have here as the energy prices rise?
00:01:01.860 You know, are we going to increase our production?
00:01:04.460 Is Trudeau finally going to applaud Western Canadian energy production
00:01:07.200 as a means of employing hundreds of thousands of Canadians
00:01:10.320 and helping to pay for all the COVID-19 pandemic measures?
00:01:13.280 Of course he isn't.
00:01:14.520 No.
00:01:15.120 Where's Trudeau?
00:01:15.760 He's used his new cabinet appointments in order to signal that he's going to declare
00:01:21.380 an all-out war upon conventional energy generation in Canada.
00:01:27.140 I mean, he's made no bounds about this.
00:01:29.720 He appointed environmental radical Stephen Gilball to the position of environment minister.
00:01:34.460 Like, he, Trudeau's making it clear he has no interest in allowing Canada's petrochemical sector
00:01:39.640 to continue on its path to net zero emissions.
00:01:41.740 Like, the petrochemical industry has been reducing their emissions year after year after year.
00:01:45.720 They've been doing carbon capture, things like that.
00:01:47.160 Trudeau doesn't want to go that route.
00:01:48.360 He wants to shut them down.
00:01:49.760 He wants to shut it down altogether, and he wants to do it soon.
00:01:52.780 So, I mean, if you're not familiar with Stephen Gilball's history,
00:01:56.520 he's been involved in extreme environmental actions for decades.
00:02:00.000 In 2001, he was arrested and charged for hanging from the CN Tower in Toronto
00:02:05.000 in a Greenpeace protest.
00:02:06.500 That's real cabinet minister material if I've ever seen it.
00:02:10.380 This is a rational, deep-thinking man.
00:02:13.200 He put emergency responders in danger when he did that.
00:02:16.120 He was involved with a group of protesters who terrorized then-Premier Ralph Klein's wife, Colleen.
00:02:20.780 They climbed up on the roof of the premier's home as a protest stunt in 2002.
00:02:25.800 Gilball's not a run-of-the-mill environmental activist.
00:02:28.280 We've got a lot of those.
00:02:28.920 No, he's from the extreme wing of them.
00:02:31.280 And now he's in one of the most powerful roles in the country,
00:02:34.720 put there by Justin Trudeau.
00:02:36.180 Government cabinets, they're carefully selected,
00:02:38.140 especially right after an election like this.
00:02:40.960 People who choose those roles or chosen to fill those cabinet roles,
00:02:44.360 they represent the direction the government wants to go in.
00:02:47.220 Justin Trudeau never made a secret of his ambitions
00:02:49.820 to be the prime minister who conquered climate change.
00:02:52.420 So he's set up his cabinet to do so.
00:02:55.660 And to make it clear, Trudeau doesn't just want to talk about it.
00:02:57.980 He wants to act.
00:02:59.480 And our western provinces and their premiers,
00:03:02.220 the ones that have their act together,
00:03:03.680 should really be taking heed right now.
00:03:06.460 I mean, Trudeau's been in office for six years,
00:03:08.340 and there's not much he can point to.
00:03:09.780 He doesn't have an established legacy.
00:03:11.760 The clock's ticking.
00:03:12.440 And if nothing changes, Trudeau's going to be remembered
00:03:14.980 as being nothing aside from a vacuous placeholder
00:03:18.040 who happened to have a famous name
00:03:19.480 who sat in the prime minister's office for six to eight years.
00:03:23.260 Trust, Trudeau's vanity is almost debilitating it so well established.
00:03:27.680 He doesn't want to go out that way,
00:03:29.040 so he's planned to make battling climate change his legacy.
00:03:33.120 But he's not bright enough to do it well.
00:03:35.000 While battling climate change could be accomplished
00:03:36.900 through mitigating efforts like carbon capture,
00:03:39.000 selling clean burning natural gas to the world,
00:03:40.880 no, Trudeau appointed Gilboa as Canada's environment minister.
00:03:44.420 And in doing that, he's made it clear
00:03:46.280 he wants to fight climate change
00:03:47.740 through shutting down Canada's hydrocarbon industries.
00:03:53.540 Gilboa expressly stated he wants to do that.
00:03:56.380 There's no mistake Trudeau gave him this much authority.
00:03:58.660 There can only be one goal in mind.
00:04:02.100 Trudeau, one area where he was, Canada,
00:04:04.360 where he stated he doesn't pay attention
00:04:06.020 to monetary fiscal policies and issues.
00:04:09.040 He doesn't care that the world's in an energy crisis.
00:04:11.960 He doesn't understand what shutting down
00:04:15.060 Canada's petrochemical industry is going to do to the economy.
00:04:19.300 I mean, this is Justin Trudeau.
00:04:20.480 His foresight doesn't extend beyond his own nose.
00:04:23.500 All he's looking at is being enshrined as the crusader
00:04:26.600 who defeated the evil oil industry.
00:04:30.160 Now, Alberta should be the prime province
00:04:32.940 standing up for and defending the energy sector
00:04:35.740 against this ideologically driven federal government.
00:04:37.900 Unfortunately, Premier Kenney has proven himself
00:04:41.780 to be long on talk and short on action
00:04:43.860 when it comes to actually standing up to Ottawa.
00:04:47.100 It's hard to get hopeful with what Premier Kenney may do
00:04:50.560 in light of this.
00:04:51.680 And right now, he's distracted with a breaking
00:04:53.240 sexual harassment lawsuit against one of his cabinet ministers.
00:04:55.860 He's not going to have time to mount a spirited defense
00:04:57.940 of Alberta's industries, nor does he even have the public support
00:05:01.260 to be taken seriously in such a defense.
00:05:03.200 So, we're really left hanging right now.
00:05:06.720 Western Canadian energy companies are vulnerable,
00:05:09.120 and Trudeau knows it.
00:05:10.620 There's not going to be any help coming from our new natural resources minister either.
00:05:15.320 That's another indicator of where Trudeau is going with things.
00:05:18.120 Minister Jonathan Wilkinson,
00:05:19.080 he comes from a history of renewable energy development.
00:05:22.780 He was in companies that did biomass and things like that.
00:05:25.400 He's going to be tickled pink to see the petrochemical companies
00:05:28.760 driven from the Canadian economy.
00:05:30.400 These guys can't make it on their own.
00:05:31.620 They just feel if they can kill the competition,
00:05:33.040 the world will suddenly go green and embrace their products.
00:05:35.900 The chill's already happening investment-wise.
00:05:38.220 Getting investment into Canadian conventional energy projects
00:05:40.660 was already a tough task due to Ottawa's hostility towards the sector.
00:05:45.360 Now, in light of this new federal cabinet in Ottawa,
00:05:47.420 finding investment is going to be nearly impossible.
00:05:50.480 I mean, would you invest in a Canadian energy project
00:05:52.940 when the Prime Minister has appointed a cabinet
00:05:55.320 determined to shut down the industry?
00:05:58.300 I mean, you'd be out of your mind.
00:06:00.120 The only advice I can offer to Canadians right now
00:06:02.380 is to buckle in and get ready for a rough ride.
00:06:06.920 I mean, Justin Trudeau,
00:06:07.940 he's going to the 26th UN Climate Conference in Glasgow next week,
00:06:12.180 and he's going to be strutting around.
00:06:13.560 He's going to be rubbing shoulders with Gretchen Whitmer
00:06:16.000 and other people on his intellectual level.
00:06:18.500 You can imagine Trudeau bragging to them all
00:06:20.140 about how he's going to be setting up Canada as an example
00:06:22.300 on how to battle climate change.
00:06:25.340 I mean, Trudeau's embarrassed himself overseas so many times
00:06:28.800 and embarrassed us by extension many times.
00:06:32.400 And he's had trouble being taken seriously by other world leaders.
00:06:36.140 So he's seeing this as an opportunity to set himself up
00:06:37.760 as a player on the world stage.
00:06:39.500 Damn it, they're going to take me seriously.
00:06:41.340 When Justin gets back from the Glasgow Summit, watch out.
00:06:45.360 He's loaded the gun with his new cabinet.
00:06:47.380 He's going to be fired up and ready to shoot.
00:06:48.980 And the first target he's going to be shooting at
00:06:51.100 is going to be Alberta.