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Below are a ton of new upcoming events and news coverage of Sierra Club Canada, so feel free to skip the (apologies, long) intro today. But, for your information...
The only coherent plan the Federal Government has presented so far is one to de-regulate and privatize. Worse, as The Breach reports, they would know that privatization will create 'natural private monopolies' that will drive up costs for Canadians - all this to the benefit of the wealthiest 1% increasingly tied to the U.S. Administration. The sale of airports (etc.) is still very much on the table, if only hidden in the fine print. Find out how to push back here.
The Federal Government announced a series of non-binding guidelines for AI data centres to be built in Canada by U.S. corporations, which are so weak as to be practically meaningless. Raising the question of why - if the Federal goal was to build a sovereign data system (it's not) - would they let any U.S. corporation build a data centre in Canada, at all? Again, we're already publicly financing the building of a gas plant for Meta's data centre. The Narwhal reports that "Albertans could be on the hook for hundreds of millions — or billions — to help support power for AI data centres."
When I say this approach of de-regulation and privatization is a serious threat to Canadian sovereignty and democracy, I mean it. We are not far off from a situation where U.S. AI tech could monitor our streets, as a CBC report notes. Yet our Government thinks Palantir is a Canadian company. Meanwhile, U.S. AI companies are already:
"...building a predictive [“pre-crime”] surveillance system aimed at tracking activists who are opposed to advanced AI development."
There's no room for relaxed - non-binding - regulation of U.S. big tech nor U.S. big oil and gas. Our regulations must be comprehensive and binding. But the Federal Government just 'quietly exempted oilsands and gas power plants from environmental impact assessments.' Again, the companies representing 80% of Canadian oil sands production are 60% American-owned, as are a lot of gas plant interests. This also comes after the Federal Government buried its recent 'report warning of worsening [climate] impacts' and comes as a new report by the Canadian Climate Institute shows that:
"...policy rollbacks by the federal government have put Canada more than 20 years behind schedule on reducing emissions."
Excess Profits and Export Taxes vs. U.S. Oil and Gas Corporations
The hold these U.S. oil and gas and tech interests hold over our government is so strong that - as we covered last week - our government won't strike back at the U.S. with oil and gas export taxes (even though Albertans overwhelmingly support such export taxes, see this Ipsos PDF and Nanos PDF). The argument is, of course, that we must maintain our reputation as a 'reliable trading partner with the U.S.' But, within that argument that we must not even threaten an export tax, is the surrender of our sovereignty. If we cannot even be "unreliable" in response to outright aggression then we have surrendered our sovereignty in advance. It's also a nation-level reflection of a lie neoliberal economists have told workers for decades: 'make yourself useful and your rights will be respected' (utter nonsense).
The U.S. does not have an easy replacement for Canadian oil: Venezuela's production - if it happens - would take years to ramp up. Renewable energy is replacing oil and gas anyway, which is why Canada must also move away from relying on oil and gas exports in general. But we should be willing to use our leverage while we have it. As former PM, Jean Chrétien, pointed out recently, energy is the U.S. weak spot:
"[The U.S. has] excluded oil, gas, electricity, potash. Why? Because they need it very badly. So perhaps one day we will have to impose an export tax." .
The hold oil and gas interests have is so strong that our government also won't enact an excess profits tax on oil and gas corporations (also supported by a majority of Albertans) to help Canadians out with the cost of living. A gas tax holiday pause - by contrast - simply allows oil and gas corporations to raise prices by the difference and take the benefit from the consumer, while our government gives up vital revenue. As the Centre for Future Work details in their new report, Extending Gas Tax Holiday Won’t Fix Fossil Fuel Inflation:
“Canadian gasoline and diesel prices are higher now than they were before the tax holiday came into effect (and have been higher through most of the 18 weeks since it began). The full value of the tax holiday (to fuel consumers) has thus been more than offset by continued increases in the cost of petroleum products.”
Then again, perhaps all this is unsurprising since in a former role, Prime Minister Carney (who says he still thinks a fair deal with the U.S. is possible without the threat of export taxes - when its not):
"...oversaw the sale of the last public stake in PetroCanada, the Crown corporation that had once helped break the dominance of U.S. oil corporations in Canada."
Wasting billions on new pipelines is pointless today, the world is going renewable too fast. The oil and gas industry accounts for only '7.8% of our GDP (including both direct and indirect economic impact, the direct contribution is only ~3.4%)' - Canada can go fully renewable and an excess profits tax would help.
We cannot win against the U.S. by letting U.S. oligarchy in via the back door and selling off infrastructure like airports to the 1%. But we can pick a different way forward: regulation saves money and lives as Ole Hendrickson has written.
No Coherent Plan: Just False 'Compromise'
We are being pitched a series of 'false compromises.' So I also want to take a moment to address claims that the Federal Government plans to learn from past 'mistakes' when it comes to respecting Indigenous rights. If that were the case a publicly funded, marketless, oil pipeline would not be pushed through BC despite the objection of First Nations. That's not to mention how Federal cuts to services will disproportionately impact Indigenous communities.
Again, none of that is surprising. It follows the appointment of a principle advisor (Scott Gilmore) to the Prime Minister who has said (and I quote Scott's own words here):
"If we really want to end the violence and depravation that plagues Canada’s remote Aboriginal communities, we need to help them leave these communities, forever.”
That, understandably, does not sit well with First Nations advocates and Government actions reflect that no lessons have been learned about past harms. As CBC Reports:
"The Carney government continues to fight First Nations in court to deny Canada has a legal duty to ensure they have safe drinking water..."
The few things the Federal Government has done that do make our economy more local, lack a consistent plan because there is no coherent "plan" for Canada: instead these few positive actions act merely as PR cover while bad actions get quietly hidden. If you're trying to prevent courts from holding you to climate promises, then you're lying about trying to build out clean energy at 'pace never seen before.'
Again, the only plan is to de-regulate and privatize and it is a plan driven - not by a pragmatic assessment of what Canada most needs right now - but by nostalgia for previous periods of Canada's history, nostalgia for the U.S. neoliberalism of the 1980s, and nostalgia for oil and gas. It is as such ignorant of both the harm done to Indigenous peoples in those periods (and now), ignorant of the pointless harms of privatization that led to this point, and ignorant of the current technological changes that are making oil and gas obsolete.
Our Federal Government is living in a fantasy world of the 'great men' of history - not addressing the complex world as it is (and was). 'Great men' do not save democracies. In fact, faith in 'great men' - purposefully or not - tends to destroy democracy and cause great harm by removing from consideration better ways forward. It is many people - working together - who historically save and improve democracies. | 
