Canada plays a role in making the world a safer place. Why not?

Commentary

It started in Japan: the concept of decoupling from China. The Japanese government offered its companies billions of dollars to move production out of China to safer, friendlier locations.

Then fire caught fire in the United States – initially under the Trump administration, then continued under Biden – with their huge tariffs on Chinese goods and huge subsidies for companies bringing production back to the US.

In Europe, there was a subtler admission that Europe relied on China but had to recognize the risks involved in dealing with such a large, unstable and unfair regime.

Unlike the US, European luxury brands are being picked up in China, where brands such as Mercedes Benz, Louis Vuitton, Zara, Carrefour, H&M and Volkswagen dominate China’s malls and high streets.

As such, the EU could not afford to lose the Chinese market for their products, opting instead for a softer approach called “risk reduction”. This is where Europe is reducing its reliance on China as a market – improving supply chains outside China, finding alternative suppliers and reducing its reliance on Chinese technology – while continuing to sell products to China.

Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Europe (along with the rest of the “free world”) recognized the enormous risk involved in buying energy from Russia. The goal was to replace Russian energy with kinder, more stable supplies.

While Russia has been able to largely offset sales to Europe through increased sales to India and China (but at reduced prices), Europe has failed to find competitively priced alternatives, forcing them to source energy from the Middle East and Venezuela. to buy at inflated prices. Prices.

And where was Canada in this mix? Largely absent.

When Japan and Germany called on Canada to open up its vast natural gas reserves, our prime minister offered them low-carbon hydrogen instead, stating that the “business case” for selling natural gas was not there (no executives in our oil industry and gas sector echoed Justin Trudeau’s position).

When the world realized that China was dominating the market in rare earths, cobalt, nickel, lithium and potassium, rather than speeding up production, Trudeau introduced legislation that made it much more difficult to extract these minerals.

Instead, Trudeau offers tens of billions of dollars in grants to companies to produce lithium batteries. We have tremendous natural advantages in the production of lithium and other minerals needed for battery production, but no natural advantage in battery production.

The astonishing thing about the proposed battery production subsidy is that it is very likely that Canada will import lithium from China to obtain the necessary supplies, while delaying the production of our own lithium supply.

When the current Liberal government came to power, there were eight requests for natural gas pipelines to carry this commodity to our shores to sell to international markets. The government has rejected all but one application, which has still not been built, in part because of disputes with unelected First Nations hereditary leaders.

If these requests were allowed to proceed, the value of this product, according to energy expert Terry Etam, this would have been an additional $2.8 billion per month for governments in taxes and royalties, while producers would earn $2.2 billion per month. This lost income is enough to fund an additional 100,000 nurses a year in Canada’s healthcare system and provide clean water to all First Nations communities in Canada.

It is worth remembering that any sale of natural gas has the potential to offset the use of coal or diesel fuel. And if you subscribe to the climate change mantra carbon dioxide is pollutionnatural gas produces 40 percent less greenhouse gases than coal — and minimal amounts of the more toxic oxides.

Under our current administration, Canada has largely abandoned its longstanding international military role, of which we used to be very proud. Today, our Air Force is largely non-existent and years away from our Navy being truly operational, if ever. That doesn’t mean we can’t use our natural resources to make the world a safer place.

The world is crying out for the displacement of Russian energy and Chinese minerals. Our natural gas makes the world cleaner. The production of our minerals will accelerate the global capacity to electrify the planet.

Unfortunately, our current government does not see Canada as playing a major role in global risk reduction, and instead focuses on micro-profits within Canada through the use of the expensive, economically damaging and inflationary carbon tax.

Unlike the US and Europe, where real gains have been made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Canada – whose federal government is an enthusiastic endorser of the climate change narrative – has made no progress in the eight years since Trudeau is in power.

Instead of helping the world achieve real risk reductions and lower carbon emissions, Trudeau chooses to punish Canadians through pernicious “carbon taxes” that make everything in Canada more expensive and everything Canada sells less competitive.

In a world where two great powers are destabilizing the planet, Canada has abandoned its international obligations.

To any casual observer, it cannot go unnoticed that Canada is increasingly excluded from international security agreements, economic agreements, military agreements and energy agreements, while pretending to make Italy a better place by criticizing them for their record in the field of human rights.

The views expressed in this article are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.