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

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.

Western Standard - October 28, 2021

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

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