Power Struggle
Improving the energy dialogue in Canada (and beyond) through honest, non-partisan, and fact- based conversations.
The energy conversation is personal: it’s in our homes, in our hands, and now, it’s in our ears. Power Struggle invites you to listen in on honest, non-partisan, and fact-based conversations between host Stewart Muir and the leaders and thinkers designing modern energy.
Watch videos at https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod
Power Struggle
Powering Tomorrow with Canada’s Energy and Indigenous Strength // Heather Exner-Pirot
As a Senior Fellow and Director of Energy, Natural Resources, and Environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, and a special advisor to the Business Council of Canada, Heather breaks down the hard truths about Canada’s energy future.
She wasn’t always in energy. In fact, her journey started in international development, working in places like Guatemala and South Africa. But when she came back to Canada, she realized something: the biggest development opportunities weren’t overseas. They were right here, in Canada’s resource sector.
Heather has spent years championing Indigenous partnerships, cutting through misinformation, and pushing for smarter energy policies. In this episode, she shares why Canada has both the opportunity and the responsibility to lead, and what’s stopping us from getting there.
We dive into:
- The biggest challenge Canada faces on the global stage (and how energy security plays into it)
- How Indigenous partnerships are key – not an option – to shaping the future of resource development
- The impact of outdated policies on Canada’s energy sector
- 6 essential changes Canada needs to make to stay competitive
- How resource wealth can be both a blessing and a curse
- Why nuclear energy and uranium enrichment are key to our future
Follow us and our guest on social media:
Stewart Muir on Linkedin
Heather on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heather-exner-pirot/
Heather on Twitter: https://x.com/exnerpirot
The energy conversation is polarizing. But the reality is multidimensional. Get the full story with host Stewart Muir.
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Video available on Power Struggle’s YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/@PowerStrugglePod
Hi, I'm Stuart Muir. This is Power Struggle Today on the podcast. I'm thrilled to welcome Heather Exner- Pirot. Heather is a senior fellow and director of energy, natural resources and environment at the MacDonald Laurier Institute in Ottawa and she's also a Special Advisor to the Business Council of Canada and a Research Advisor to the Indigenous Resource Network and Global Fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington DC. Heather, welcome to Power Struggle.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Okay, thanks so much for having me Delighted to be here, Stuart.
Stewart Muir:It's great to see you today. There's so much history we have. Maybe we'll get into some of the things we've done together, but really I just wanted to get right to the point. In these interesting times, what do you see as the most pressing challenge that Canada is facing on the global stage today?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Wow, great question. And I have to you know, before we get into resources, then I guess I have to say the role of the United States and the Western Alliance and the stability of the liberal world order, and that's a tall, that's a big problem to have. So when the United States is, you know, saying that it wants to invade annexed territory, whether it's the Panama Canal, Greenland, or even jokes about Canada, and you're putting out through some executive orders which I don't think would normally stand through the test of the constitution, I think that's a big problem for Canada as part of this Western Democratic Alliance. But we have some tools in our toolbox.
Stewart Muir:You've been writing recently about some of the approaches that Canada should follow. You had six pillars that you identified. I'd like to come back to those, but what do you think is the most important one of those?
Heather Exner-Pirot:It depends on the timeframe. I guess you know our most. You know this is just. You know world history of the 20th and 21st century. Oil is king. Oil is king in the commodities world. Energy is king in the security world, and Canada happens to have a ton of it. And we are the world's third largest exporter, fourth largest producer and we have enormous reserves that certainly won't exhaust in my lifetime. So you know and I have to give credit to Newfoundland Premier for this line is that in this game of chess we're playing, energy is the queen, and I agree with that. We have quite a few, you know quite a few assets, but oil is by far the biggest.
Stewart Muir:Well, oil takes us into energy security, energy transition, because those have been at the center of so many debates. What do you see as the evolution of these discussions? Because some of these ideas, particularly energy transition, if we look at recent policy moves in the US, like pulling out of Paris Accord- where are we headed in that regard?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean, you know, I don't think one presidential term really affects, you know, an energy transition when you're talking about, you know, global energy supply for 8 billion people. United States is big, but it's not that big that it can affect what everyone's doing in Asia or Africa in the next 20 years, et cetera, et cetera. So, and that's why I've always thought, you know, regardless of policy in Western democracies, what will drive oil demand or not is, you know, the ability of people to afford it in the developing world. And for me, energy consumption will increase until global population plateaus and starts to decline. And we are certainly reaching a peak child, peak baby.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I think we may have reached this year where we've seen as many babies born in the world as we'll see born again, and that means that peak population will follow in about 30 years or so. We'll see between 20 and 40 years, let's say, and then oil consumption may very well decline after that. I also think nuclear has tremendous possibilities, tremendous runway. That's also great for Canada from an energy security perspective because of our incredible uranium resources. But anyways, what Donald Trump does or doesn't do, I don't think will be a rounding error on the history of oil and global supply and demand.
Stewart Muir:One of the things you write about frequently is how Indigenous communities are at the centre of everything, at least in Canada and probably some other countries, when it comes to resource development and the provision of the things that the world can't get by without. So tell me about partnerships and what's happening in that space between industry and First Nations Indigenous communities.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah well, why don't I dive a little deeper here, stuart, since we have the time yes, we do.
Heather Exner-Pirot:You know this, you know people. It's not a DEI initiative to respect Indigenous rights in Canada. This cannot be wished away. It cannot be legislated away because it's in a DEI initiative to respect Indigenous rights in Canada. This cannot be wished away. It cannot be legislated away because it's in our constitution and there's also, you know it's an inherent right and protected, you know, to some extent at the international level too. But anyway, shape or form, governments and proponents who are smart are trying to be good at this, not try to get around it. And so to describe to you what is protecting the constitution, it is a recognition and affirmation of Aboriginal rights and there's pretty good consensus and lots of legal precedence that what that means is partly an ability to practice their culture, which includes hunting and gathering, using these things for cultural reasons.
Heather Exner-Pirot:So almost any resource extraction probably in particular hydro mining, oil and gas those will have an impact on Aboriginal rights because it has an environmental impact. And so the condition, the task that must be met, is that it's. You know, there's a duty to consult and a duty to accommodate If there's some reasonable accommodation. Not, there is no right to a veto, there is no right to have zero environmental impact, but there's a need to accommodate the loss or the impact on Aboriginal rights. And so since that duty to consult and accommodate was affirmed around 2004, 2005, that has really changed the game in Canada and again proponents who want to art print in Canada are just are working on doing this better.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And we've gotten pretty smart in the last two decades Probably. You know, despite all the challenges in BC, it's encouraged people to get smarter, in particular in BC. So some of the things that we do is procurement, training. Just pure payments could be milestone payments for how our project proceeds, could be royalties once a project is already proceeding, the loan guarantees that provide equity. And now we're trying to think of you know what are the missing gaps? What other kinds of programs could you have to do? And the end goal here is really a win-win that industry benefits, indigenous communities benefit, that you have alignment in their goals and so projects can move forward at pace, but that everyone benefits. And that's why I like economic development. Maybe you too, stuart. That's why I love resource development, because it's not a zero-sum game. Canada is so rich in resources. If we do this right, we can all be very prosperous.
Stewart Muir:Is there an example, a story you could give us of someone who's really succeeding there?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, I, you know, I have a great example. I used to work at the University of Saskatchewan and there was this one student, and she was Indigenous, from La Ronge, and you know I had created a little, a little loan program for students as I. You know. I had created a little loan program for students as I had heard and realized A lot of them were missing classes because they couldn't afford groceries, couldn't send their school because they didn't have groceries for their kids and couldn't go to their clinical or their class because they had to stay home. All these little things. That a couple hundred dollars to someone else was kind of a make or break point. So we had this little tiny loan program, kind of emergency loan program for students, and this, I'll say, woman, you know, she was young, in her early 20s, from La Ronne. Jasper didn't tell, he didn't say why or didn't ask, I just took her word for it.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I later found out, stuart, that her mother had committed suicide and she did the money to pay for the funeral and she paid back that loan.
Heather Exner-Pirot:You know I never pressed anyone, you know, it was kind of an open-ended thing and all the loans were paid back and I didn't mind.
Heather Exner-Pirot:She paid back that loan in six months while she was still at school, still doing her nursing fourth year nursing. That's a tough year and I just thought the different steps that a lot of these students and, stuart, you're friends with a lot of people in these communities too what they have to go through to achieve what was, you know, an easy path for someone like me and there's no one that you know that's you know, from an Indigenous and Northern remote community that's now an engineer or a nurse or a chemist or a welder that didn't have a harder time getting there than almost every other white person that you know. And that's been my experience with the dozens of people that I know. So, yes, it may take you or your company a little bit of extra effort, a little bit of extra time to mentor or to teach or to be patient or bring someone up to speed, but I promise you that extra 5% of effort that you require. I promise you they're giving 95% extra effort than any of your other employees to get to that point.
Stewart Muir:That's a real testament to where your work began. I'm intrigued how you then bridged into these national economic conversations. I have to say kudos to you, heather, because you're almost always the first, or one of the first off the mark to give an accessible, rational explanation to developing news, and I look to you for that and I think you're increasingly recognized for that. So I think you're clearly succeeding in your analysis becoming available to the many. But how do you go from the story you've described of working with people on campus and then now you are an influential commentator on global affairs and national affairs in Canada and beyond?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, great question. So where I started? I think I always make this joke If you were my age in the 90s and you were kind of leftist, leftist, liberal, white girl, you went into international development. Nowadays you go into climate change or environmental studies, but back in my day it was still international development. And so, you know, I did study abroad in Guatemala, I went to South Africa, I did my master's research in southern Chile, all these things. And then came back and did an internship in Geneva and you know. So it's kind of always international development, international security, human security. There was an overlap.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And then did my PhD in Arctic studies and was working, really, really went from Arctic security and development to Northern security and development, to indigenous development, to resource development, and so I would say that I came into resource development from the back door, from the perspective of how do you make this work, you know, for you know how do you get Indigenous communities and industry aligned. But my PhD was on pretty, you know, standard IR stuff on the Arctic, arctic security, and I always kept up with that too. I mean the Arctic Council, for example. We've kept up with that too. I mean the Arctic Council, for example, when Ukraine was invaded by Russia.
Heather Exner-Pirot:That's when my work switched from really kind of that industry, indigenous alignment and resource development in Western and Northern Canada to the energy security side and the critical minerals. And how do we use this in Canada, you know, to our advantage and to advance our own values and interests. And that was when MLI created a program out of it. So I think you know, for everyone, the zeitgeist switched, you know, obviously, you know there's a, you know we think about 1991, we think about 2001. And now I think we'll think about 2022 as the year that you know the world changed and and my position changed with it, because the world changed too.
Stewart Muir:Your journey, heather, is interesting. I I relate to that. I suspect a lot of people relate to this because you've come into being a commentator on on global affairs, but the natural resource side of that because of your social interests.
Stewart Muir:And um, I look at it the same way. I mean, to me the greatest beneficiary in Canada and any country where natural resources is a large driver of the economy is governments, because of the tax revenues. You stack up all the benefits Like there's no company that makes more money than the governments do out of responsible resource development, and then it's on the government to distribute the benefits of that to the people. So I think the most genuine position that could exist in Canada is to say to support the people. We need to make sure this is done right, because if it isn't and things get mucked up and the benefits aren't there, then we're going to see a loss of quality of life first of all.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, and I'll tell you my origin story in a way, stuart. I remember I was working at the International Center for Northern Governance and Development at the University of Saskatchewan and Cameco was a big funder of that and a lot of our students were coming from Northern Saskatchewan and it was as a way to recruit and a way to get social license. But it was a very good thing chemical was doing and I think they're ahead of the curve in Indigenous industry relations and obviously a very powerful Uranium mining company.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yes, uranium mining company and we can get into it. But Saskatchewan has the richest uranium reserves in the world and they're the number one two exporter in the world right now. And I remember my boss at the time doing a radio interview and saying and talking about how, you know, the indigenous communities wanted to see more development. And I was just new to the job at the time, you know, coming back from Geneva and I, you know, 24 years old, in Saskatchewan, that was the first time in my life I had heard someone talk about a positive relationship between a mining company and Indigenous communities. And then you start to wonder why haven't we heard this before? Because then when you start to get into it and you know, stuart, when you work with communities and when you work with industry, they usually have quite close relationships, closer than certainly they would have with Ottawa either of them and so started to explore that this was at the time of the last commodity cycle.
Heather Exner-Pirot:The commodities boom in Saskatchewan had a big impact on Saskatchewan psychologically when we went from a have-not to a have almost permanently. Now we're the second richest province generally and that was a big change. And also that was a time where Indigenous communities and their economic development corporations were really starting to get into the supply chain and all the conversation was about was how to prepare people for the supply chain, what kind of training, how to set up good governance and boards for economic development corporations, all that kind of stuff. It was development and governance it was, and then the what's-to-win blockades came. Governance it was, and then the what's the one blockades came and I saw from a national media perspective, what I thought was just a pure distortion of the situation, knowing, as I did intellectually and from knowing some people in the communities that most 21st nations had signed on that people and I knew the work because I had done in Saskatchewan.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I knew the work it took to develop those economic development corporations, to get those contracts, to get that procurement, to get people trained up, to get them certified, to go through their safety, to get their 3A all the things that you have to do to have that opportunity. And no one even saw it. You were staring right at it with their eyes and not a single media story or, I have have to say, government of BC or federal government. No one saw that side of the story and that's where I say I got radicalized and made it, you know, my life's mission to celebrate and platform and boost those people in Indigenous and Northern communities trying to do something good for themselves and for their communities and to not let seller naysayers who don't know anything about their lives or what they're trying to do undermine them from afar.
Stewart Muir:Would you agree there was a carefully managed spectacle for the benefit of the media age and the different channels by which people communicate. That was in contrast to the story on the ground.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I absolutely agree that environmental NGOs and I had seen this work with my work on the Arctic, by the way, and there had been a huge people will probably remember this the big Greenpeace campaign, save the Arctic in 2008. And again, where I had been working with several Indigenous communities and on the North Slope of Alaska, where the Inuvialuit, I think, were quite prosperous, had the wealthiest Indigenous Second Amendment corporations in the world had real rights to the money coming in. In fact, that Alaska Settlement Act Native Settlement Act came out of the fact that there was oil wealth in Alaska and wanting to pave the way for some governance of an amendment of resources and sharing of resources. So I knew what Greenpeace was saying and where people were dressed up as polar bears in Paris and Berlin and New York was not at all and I'm not saying it was totally unanimous in Indigenous communities, but I knew people affected by it in those communities wanting to choose from themselves and having their choices absolutely limited by what environmental activists were doing in the South to feel good about themselves While still burning oil, of course.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And I remember another radicalization moment Greenpeace had a Save the Arctic t-shirt sale $100 cotton t-shirts and the money went to Greenpeace. Of course it didn't go to communities or anything. It went to fund Greenpeace and I thought the hypocrisy and the atrociousness of selling cheap cotton t-shirts which have an environmental impact, which have a work you know, a labor impact, in the name of saving the world and thinking that you could save the Arctic and just totally disrespectful, not even including voices of the communities there, and the seal hunt had been the same way Again. That was an eye-opening moment and once you see it, then you see it everywhere and I saw it everywhere in the what's the Wooden Blockade.
Stewart Muir:Well, it's not that difficult to find Indigenous voices of leadership who are looking for opportunities including projects, resource projects, but lots of other things who find those snatched away because an artful and clever campaign has created a certain picture that is influential with regulators or decision makers and puff, it's gone.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I agree and I'm taking some solace, even though we're living in very, you know, trying times with a lot of volatility and a lot of fear, I'd say. I have seen I'm sure you've noticed, Stuart in the last year, certainly I would say in the last three years, on the Indigenous side, where you don't have to be quite so brave to speak out, and you've known people and I could name a dozen Indigenous people who, when they first had to say I support oil and gas or I want this project for my community, how they were belittled and destroyed and demeaned on Facebook or social media or in the media called corrupt, greedy. I've seen, you know, you see cartoons of, you know, caricatures of chiefs with the briefcase stuff, with money. We've come so far and now in the last year and I think, even in Canada with this Trump threat, where people are saying Prime Minister Trudeau just said it. You know, our resources are what make us powerful and that's what the United States need and they'd be crazy not to take it. And we want to develop these things. And whether it's steel, which needs iron, and metallurgical coal or lumber or food, the grains, the canola, the natural gas, uranium, the germanium, all of these things are what gives us our hard and soft power on the world stage, and it's not just you and I and our friends that see it anymore, stuart, I would say this is a very healthy majority of Canadians have come around to this conclusion now also.
Stewart Muir:We've come a long ways from. Canada should be known for its resourcefulness, not its resources, haven't we?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I'll never get tired of throwing that back in some faces.
Stewart Muir:You know there's bound to be someone watching this, thinking well, it's all well and good that Indigenous people should have opportunities, but it can't be at the price of the planet. Maybe there's cycles and shifts in views, but I think there's always going to be someone having that concern and maybe it's a little bit at the back of everyone's mind. What are your thoughts on that?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean, you know, of course you know you will find someone that doesn't want cleaner air or a cleaner stream. We all want that. I think the key is finding the balance, and I think the balance has been out of whack where it's been almost misanthropic, where you cared more about streams and trees and rocks than you did about. You know people and their material well-being and the dignity that they can have having heat and electricity, and you know their own car, all those things that we shouldn't take for granted. And so there's 8 billion people in the world. You're not going to have a situation where there's no environmental impact. Now, I think the fatal flaw we've been making Europe certainly made it was to think that if we don't do it, it doesn't happen, when in actual fact the answer is that if we don't do it, it happens much worse, in much worse places. You know, obviously the offshoring to China has, you know, spurred tremendous amounts of coal use, far lower environmental standards, far lower labor standards and, of course, security challenges with that too. And I did do some analysis, stuart, and maybe you saw it, but in almost every case of major commodities that I looked at, it was mining, it was agricultural products, it was energy In pretty much every case think of one or two iron and bitumen but in every other case the Canadian commodity was in the top decile maybe a handful of cases quartile the mostly top decile of environmental performers. And so we're talking about they're already the best in the world, they're already A grade. So to think that by making it harder for those in that top decile to conduct their business in Canada is better for the world, by shifting their production to China, where now they're getting a degrade, now they're in the bottom quartile of environmental performers, that was a big mistake. And so and I always say this your best climate strategy export more Canadian commodities, because in almost every case it's going to be better, there's going to be lower emissions for that product in the world. And why is that? As much as because you know we're better people. You know there's some fundamental reasons why we're colder.
Heather Exner-Pirot:So in many cases you just need less energy for some things. Ai, all AI, if you care about the environment, should be in Canada, because you need less energy to cool it, because we have a lot of hydroelectricity and you know that in BC, so you have a lot of renewable electricity. Our grid is quite clean compared to other major industrial countries and using natural gas instead of coal, and that's going to be 50% better in your emissions for anything you do. And whether we like it or not, most industrial practices still require some industrial heat. It cannot be electrified. They do need that thermal heat and it's far better to do with natural gas than with coal. And our natural gas is actually quite a bit better and we capture our methane from production of natural gas a whole lot better than almost everybody else. So again, for all these factors not to mention the relationships, the ethical relations with Indigenous communities, the labour standards, for all these reasons, if you care about the environment, if you care about ESG, then in almost every instance you're better off at the Canadian product.
Stewart Muir:It feels like you've gone from being a provocateur to almost mainstream, as many people see what you're talking about. How is it you're getting through now, and maybe you weren't before?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean, part of it is just, you know, the world's a scarier place and it was a luxury for us to be able to focus on climate policy and put tens of billions of dollars into EVs or green hydrogen or some other things, not to dismiss it, but it's a luxury and I always. You know, for me it's the hierarchy of needs. You know, for your readers aren't familiar, but it's basically looking at a pyramid and the bottom is your material needs and your security. We're talking about shelter, the ability to avoid violence, and then you might get into, you know, a higher order and the top is self-actualization.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Fine and good when you're a rich, comfortable society like Canada, to start, you know wanting to focus on, you know, the environment and feminism and equality and inclusion, and those are good things. But if you don't cover that bottom layer of the pyramid people's material well-being then you cannot sustain the top and we stop paying attention to the material well-being, stuart. So, anyways, when times are tougher, people go back to you know, how am I, how is my family, how is my household, and that's very natural, and so I think there's an easier story to tell to people about. You know, there's nothing like an energy crisis to make people appreciate affordable, reliable energy.
Stewart Muir:It seems that Canada has a lot of energy options, maybe more than almost every other country in the world. I mean, who has uranium and hydroelectricity, wind, solar gas, oil, coal, what else? What am I missing in the abundance that Canada has? Is there anyone?
Heather Exner-Pirot:No, there's nobody, and I've seen I saw it once and I could never find it again so I couldn't cite it which, you know, bother me. But Canada is the most energy-secure country in the world, but I believe that to be true, because who else might be close? United States and China are also very large and they're also huge producers in a lot of these things. They even have our uranium, and they don't have our hydro either, by the way, but because they have such huge populations and internal demands, it almost comes out flat. You know where they're huge producers, but they're also huge consumers. Where Canada, and I would say Russia and Australia, are a little bit different is that we have smaller populations, huge resource base and we can export most of it. You know that we don't need it for ourselves. So and I think there's power that comes from being able to export People don't know China's huge oil producer.
Heather Exner-Pirot:They don't know it because China doesn't export oil and so it doesn't. It isn't able to play that card, isn't able to use it to advance its interests. In fact, it's still a net importer and so it's still quite vulnerable and that's why it's stockpiling. Australia does not have oil. That's a big disadvantage. I don't think it has the hydro we have and Russia doesn't have our uranium. That's one area where it's very important that we do beat Russia. Russia is a huge enricher of uranium. If you've ever heard that people want to get off Russian imports of uranium, it's the enriched stuff and they get that raw material mostly from Kazakhstan, anyway. So yeah, I thought about this a lot, stuart you and I think the same. Can anyone top us? No, a list of six things will be right at the top on tapas no, a list of six things will be right at the top.
Stewart Muir:It's just so intriguing. I mean I wonder if there's anyone who's thinking, okay, so Canada's got all these resources and thinks it's a blessing. Well, you're wrong, it's actually a curse. There's some academic theory around this Dutch disease Is having this abundance a curse?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Great question I mean there is. You know, there's some good theory and practice of a resource curse, where a country can become too reliant on a resource, and you do see that in lesser developed countries it's certainly not necessary. And you know the greatest example of that is Norway, you know, where you had good governance and you had resource wealth. That is definitely a sweet spot. Australia also is a very resource-heavy country, more resource dependent than Canada in terms of the profile of its economy. Obviously it has used that for its benefit. And then I'll say some of the Middle Eastern kingdoms, like Qatar again, have used their oil wealth or natural gas wealth quite in a clever way and have become quite wealthy societies. So the resource curse isn't destiny, it's a risk, but it's not destiny. You know Canada has the history and the governance and the parliamentary church and all those things that we have fairly well avoided that. Now why are we embarrassed? I want to get to this, stuart, and it could have been the answer to your last question too.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I have often wondered why would the Laurentian elite if I can say that, if it's not too provocative why would the Laurentian elite be embarrassed about our resource wealth? And I have heard this, and I know you've heard it too that we're mere hewers and haulers and we would like to move to a knowledge economy, to think that that resource sector is. You know, for grade 12 dropouts who drive big trucks there's certainly that feeling that it's a 20th century economy, it's not a 21st century economy. And I think, as we urbanize, 80% of Canadians, you know, live in big cities that they've been disconnected. They've not seen farms, they don't know where their food comes from. They think their food comes from the grocery store. They think their ham comes from the deli. They've not seen the pig and they think their furniture comes from Ikea. They have not seen the forests and the mills and you know that supply chain.
Heather Exner-Pirot:They think they're. You know they plug in to, you know a plug in the wall. They don't understand or think about where the electricity comes and all the steps come before that to get their electricity. They think their heat comes from turning up the thermostat. They don't think about the pipe and the gas and the production all the way. And so I think it's been. It's the disconnect in our urbanized 21st century society that people have taken for granted because we've made it so cheap and affordable and reliable, you could take it for granted. Taking it for granted is a great luxury, a great thing that we have, but I think people need to appreciate that if you don't take care of those things and that's the situation we're in now if you don't take care of those things and that's the situation we're in now if you don't take care of those things, they will not be cheap and reliable.
Stewart Muir:For very long We've been talking about Canada. We're next door to a country that's in the news a lot at the moment the United States. What are the energy relationships? How reliant is one on the other and vice versa?
Heather Exner-Pirot:If you ask me, we are fully interdependent and it would be like removing what's it called when a Siamese twin It'd be so hard to remove that Siamese twin, the veins and the vessels and everything You're going to bleed out.
Heather Exner-Pirot:So, and this has been built up over a century, this is not something that we started in the 80s and you could, you know, slowly roll it back. Our grid is perfectly interdependent. Our pipelines are almost perfectly independent, our refineries so not to like, we're talking about raw materials, but I'm talking about the transmission lines and the pipelines and the refineries and those things, and the pipelines and the refineries and those things, and if you look at any map of electric networks and the pipeline, this is a continental endeavor. And one thing we have to offer and I think we all know this, which is a blessing, this is a silver lining, we all know this is that the United States imports.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Even as they become the world's largest producer of oil, they've kept importing more and more Canadian oil as their imports of, you know, opec oil or Russian oil, has gone down and so that this month, in fact, the United States imported a record amount, more oil than any other country has ever imported from any other country in the history of the world 4.4 million barrels a day on average in that first week of January.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And it may well, you know, be that this week and next week and next month as well, and so you cannot replace, you know, 4.4 million barrels especially, and people may know this already, but in case that, a lot of Canadian oil is of the heavy variety. That's the grade it is. A lot of the refineries in the midwest and the gulf of mexico are optimized to process canadian heavy oil, and so it's not that easy to displace that heavy oil with their lighter, which is why they import canadian heavy and export some of their sweet lake crude of shale, because the refinery system doesn't want it or need it, and so it's. You know we do have some leverage here and it is against American interests, at the end of the day, to not take advantage of this incredible access not having to cross ships, not going through the Red Sea, not going through the Panama Canal, crossing a pipe over your own border of this very secure supply of oil.
Stewart Muir:Is there a danger that someone who thinks who's a resident of the US thinks that making America great again necessitates making Canada, not great?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean, I think we all know who in the United States might have that feeling that they were dealing with someone who's, you know, in an extremely powerful position and sees the world through a win-lose perspective. And this is, you know, it is a tumultuous time, for sure. But America is more than Trump. Canadian-american relationship is more than one president and one prime minister and, like I say, we've been developing this interdependence over 100 years, economically, through world wars, and, you know, maybe we'll be in a rough ride for a year or two years or four years. I hope not. Maybe we will. At the end of the day, if you know, you believe in realpolitik, just the politics of pragmatism. It's in the united states interest to use canadian resources, it's in Canada's interest to sell them our resources, and we may go from some volatility, but that trend is going to be clear, I think, across decades.
Stewart Muir:Going back a little bit when we were talking about the benefits and how we describe them for natural resources, because the Canadian economy really is a resource economy.
Stewart Muir:If you consider the life cycle of some valuable resource, you know, maybe it's a timber or a natural gas or an ore body like uranium or copper, and it exists there and there's things that will happen to it before it becomes a product in the marketplace a whole lot of things. And I think there's some economic analysis that when you break down all of the things that create that commodity as something that can be put onto a ship or a rail car and then it moves along, that, contrary to maybe the popular notion, certainly one thing that came naturally to me, I would have said well, the value in that evolution is to be had at the end. Where you've got the manufacturing, you're going to make way more money and the economy you want to have is making things. That's how you get rich. All that stuff, like you say, the hewing of wood and hauling of water. There's nothing in that, but actually, if you look at it au contraire, am I right?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean statistically. Yeah, let's look at this both sides of the equation. You know this is statistics, ken, I think you know you and I know it, but maybe not all your listeners know it. But oil and gas is the most productive sector of the economy. The value you get per hour worked is in. You know the high. You know I've seen some where oil sands is $1,000, but others I've seen would go up to $700. Depends how you count, if we're talking about average, median, that kind of thing. But where the average Canadian worker generates, let's say, $52 an hour for Canadian GDP, an oil sands worker will do $7,800, $900. Mining also. Mining would be almost the next highest productivity and it could be as high as $600 for a potash worker if potash prices are good. But usually I think an average about you know, somewhere around $250, between $200 and $300 anyways. So those workers doing that primary extraction are providing a tremendous amount of productivity and GDP to the Canadian economy and it's not low skilled work, you know.
Heather Exner-Pirot:That's when I find insulting, maybe from Western Canadian perspective, to think that the oil sands is easy work and not to appreciate. You know the engineering genius to figure out how to take that product which was not worth much in the 70s, and turn it into and I did the analysis with Brian Ramillard a few weeks ago. We spent a trillion dollars in capital spend and operational spend on that project. It was generated much more than that to the Canadian economy. That's just the spend and so we turned it into a trillion dollar asset because of engineering genius you know what I mean To figure out how to turn that bitumen into something that's economic and same with all kinds of mining and same with all kinds of resource development. You know TMX. You know I met a couple months ago to celebrate TMX.
Heather Exner-Pirot:As Ian Anderson pointed out, he was the CEO of the project until a couple years ago. You know that's probably the best pipeline in the world. Yes, you know it was certainly over budget and I wish that hadn't happened. So, but when you look at the engineering that went into creating TMX and the standard it has and you know, it's the Rolls Royce of pipelines that we now happen to have in Canada and, okay, we might just need a Civic. I hope we just build a civic next time. But to put a pipe through mountains and to do it in the way they do it, it takes engineering brilliance, and so I just wish people would appreciate what the chemists, what the geologists, what the engineers, what the financial guys do. These are very highly competitive, world-class sectors, and you don't get there just because you have a good deposit in the ground. There's lots of places that have ore bodies in the ground. They're just sitting there, and we've got a few of those out.
Stewart Muir:And I would point out that the example you just cited, the Trans Mountain Pipeline that goes from Edmonton to the Vancouver area, the Trans Mountain Pipeline that goes from. Edmonton to the Vancouver area. It was built with the approval of 50 First Nations and that approval was secured by Ian Anderson. You've mentioned his work.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Why do you think they approved it?
Heather Exner-Pirot:For some that and people should know sometimes these great deals that you hear about came down to the CEO and Ian Anderson should probably have a statue in downtown Calgary because the oil that we can ship through and the royalties Alberta gets from.
Heather Exner-Pirot:But he did the work of having a chief-to-chief relationship with so many of those nations where they felt and they did, you know, could call him on his phone and he would answer negotiated. And again, you know this part of the cost, it didn't need to be $34 billion, this part of the cost, it didn't need to be $34 billion. But you won't maybe mind, as a Canadian, that we spent a little bit more money on it to avoid some very important cultural sites, you know, to avoid harming some particular species, and that they you know that they listened to and even righted some wrongs from the 1950s version of Trans Mountain where that was kind of done and just, you know, just pushed through no consultation, did not care what the local community thought, and righted some wrongs of what that pipeline did in the past and now they will get economic benefits from it. So again, you know that's an expensive example but it's still also a good example of how industry and indigenous groups can come to an alignment, can find a win-win.
Stewart Muir:That kind of brings us full circle back to conversations you've been having about energy resources reconciliation, and I mentioned this early on. You have identified six factors that will build Canada and its future prosperity. You mentioned a couple of them. We talked about those, but I'd like to go back to that and just list through them and just try to put that out there, because there are six factors that every Canadian needs to know.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, thanks, stuart, and you know, but my thinking too was, in this time, very Canadian. There's just a hand ring for the last two months of the ways in which we're vulnerable to the United States. And to remind everyone that guess what? We're enormously rich, we have an abundance of everything and that makes us very powerful. If we would like to exercise it, we have a ton of options of using our resources to advance, you know, our prosperity and our security and that of our allies. By the way, everyone knows, and it won't be a surprise on your show, you know I disagree with what the Trudeau government has done. They've made very damaging policies. Some provincial governments have made some damaging policies, but beyond that, what do so? What do you want specifically to fix that? We can all complain all day about what's been done, but what specifically should we do to improve the situation? And that's where this list came from.
Heather Exner-Pirot:So, number one more pipelines. And I think that's obvious to everybody. But to be even more specific than that, northern Gateway Pipeline and Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Pipeline. First of all because a lot of the legwork has been done and so they'll be able to get done easier. Second of all, because it diversifies us away from the United States. Third of all, because it's beside the resource, it's beside the oil sands. It because it's beside the resource, it's beside the oil sands, it's beside the money, and so logistically I think it makes a lot more sense. And fourth of all, because I think Asia is an obviously growing market, regardless of what you might think about, you know, plateauing demand in the United States or Europe or whatnot. I don't think anyone reasonable would look at the demographics of Asia and say that there's not going to be more energy demand there. And so that's, you know.
Heather Exner-Pirot:So pipelines number one, number two, reform the Impact Assessment Act that's Bill C-69, no more pipeline spills. And now we're all you know. You know it's a mantra that we need to repeal it or reform it, replace it. Specifically, what do people want? You can't, you can't just repeal it. You can't have the Canadian federal government not having environmental assessment, because they have some constitutional duties to do some of this and they would be sued if they just did nothing. I think the easiest way to get development, to get investors, proponents interested in Canada again, is just to be so narrowly focused on the constitutional division of powers that the federal government I almost don't care what the Impact Assessment Act says. I don't want it to touch mines, I don't want it to touch refineries, I don't want it to touch, you know, oil sands. So it can say what it wants, but it should not apply to any of those things that are under provincial jurisdiction. And natural resources is under provincial jurisdiction.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Nuclear is a federal responsibility you have to have you know. It's not going to be Alberta, you know Alberta deciding what capital power regulating its nuclear plant, if it does one in Alberta, it will still be the Canadian Nuclear Security Commission. It has to be under our international treaties. So they should be excellent. The CNSC should be an excellent nuclear regulator. They're pretty good. Um, they still need interprovincial pipelines, still have to be a federal jurisdiction. So that's the Canadian energy regulator. They have to be good. And then there's some things on federal lands, uh ports, that kind of thing, that you might still need an impact assessment act, uh agency for.
Heather Exner-Pirot:The third thing is on nuclear, and this was maybe the most provocative or the most kind of forward thinking one is you know, obviously we had this great uranium. We actually have in Ontario quite a good nuclear sector. I think the next logical step, thinking of the next decade you know of energy and thinking of Canada's place in the future is for us to start enriching uranium, which is a very small club. Our CANDU reactors have never needed enriched uranium. They use natural uranium, so we've never had to import enriched uranium. But OPG, ontario Power Generation, is building right now a small modular reactor. Saskatchewan will probably build a few and I think we'll have more SMRs and microreactors in Canada. That means we will need enriched uranium and I think we start doing it and I think it's a tremendous export opportunity.
Stewart Muir:And just to break that down a little bit because it's an interesting thing you touched on and it's important to understand. So Canada has enormous in Saskatchewan uranium deposits and, by the way, British Columbia voted to ban exploration for uranium, which that's a side conversation but Saskatchewan has most, or if not all, of the Commercial potential uranium, All the production yeah, all the production, and yet we ship it out to other countries who then process it.
Stewart Muir:Why didn't we start processing it here a long time ago? Is it because it's very hard or expensive, or we don't know how to do it?
Heather Exner-Pirot:I mean, there's nothing more regulated in this world than enriching uranium, Because you need this uranium to make nuclear weapons. And then there's one reason why you know, I think you know, decades ago Canadian engineers developed the candy reactor to use natural uranium, and so the difference, you know, is that I think it's, you know about 1%, you know U-308, whatever it is, I can't remember the exact formula and in a light water reactor you'd need 3% to 5%. In a microreactor you might need this high SA, low, immature, and you have to just under 20%, and after that they probably won't let you do it because you're getting to weapons grade. So we do, and I had to, you know Cameco does and it did, because we started in the 50s and we were a bit more ambitious in the 50s. They do mill, they do conversion and they do conversion and they do fabricate, can-do fuel. So they do some steps in the process of creating nuclear fuel and they will call it fuel services and, for example, they're sending converted uranium to Ukraine. So they do have contracts that they feed to other people.
Heather Exner-Pirot:At that stage, not just the raw, but enrichment is hard, it is expensive.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Russia has been, as I understand, down blending a lot of weapons grade uranium from weapons, that it's decommissioned and that has, in a way, flooded the market. So Rosetom and Russian enriched uranium has been the best competitor, I would say, on price. You know, the United States, I think, was getting 20% even of its enriched uranium from Russia, and so now the situation has changed, obviously, where, first of all, more people in the West are interested in nuclear and will need more enriched uranium, which you know we are in a period of decline before, and also that we can't depend on Russia anymore, and those factors are changing it. Now, if we're going to triple nuclear capacity, which there's 31 countries that have signed on to a declaration saying that we'll need a lot more enriched uranium. This is where I think Canada has an opportunity to start doing that value add, Because also because, again, like I say, we're going to start needing it for ourselves for the first time, and in these kinds of days I'm not in the mood to be reliant on the United States for energy security.
Stewart Muir:And why would demand for uranium triple?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, it's the trifecta in electricity. You know, as we all know, this is affordability, reliability and sustainability. That is the goal. And pick any of your sources, and I probably have two out of three. You know solar and wind will not have reliability. Natural gas and coal will not have sustainability.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Nuclear for a long time has not had affordability, although you know Ontario's nuclear generation obviously was affordable. As part of it is just the extra regulations we added after Chernobyl and Long Island. So we need to get nuclear to be affordable again. But we know that that is possible because we had affordable nuclear 50 years ago. And so if we can get nuclear affordable again and that's the point of SMRs, to do small module reactors easier to finance, easier to locate, lower regulatory burden, longer fuel cycle then we expect that we can have this electricity generation. So it's clean. It's also very energy secure because, unlike natural gas that Germany would have to import every single day from Russia, when you have a nuclear plant you may not need that fuel for a few years. You're pretty self-sustainable for a few and you can get uranium from Canada, from Australia, there's a few friendly sources. That, I think, is a feather in its cap.
Stewart Muir:There's lots of it out there. Okay, so we're looking at six things. We've covered three. We've covered pipelines, legislation and uranium. Let's go to four, five and six.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Great, okay. So four for me is earning Indigenous consent. Now, I didn't say requiring Indigenous consent. There is no veto in the Canadian Constitution, but of course the ideal situation is to earn it and to have it, you know. And so how do we do that? And again, I think the loan guarantee program has been wildly successful. The Alberta program has given out, I think, $800 million. There's a couple billion dollar deals on the horizon. The federal government has adopted it because it was so successful. It's been a game changer. The loan guarantee program BC has one.
Stewart Muir:And the loan guarantee program. That's where a government-backed entity is providing guaranteed loans. So a First Nation which has trouble going to a bank because their property is held communally so the bank's not going to be able to repossess that land, is that?
Heather Exner-Pirot:right.
Stewart Muir:And so the government say well, this First Nation should be able to invest in that project, but you can't get the money from the bank, so we're going to loan you those funds.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Exactly, and that's been a game changer.
Heather Exner-Pirot:you're saying it has been a game changer on pipelines for sure. Now the thing about the Loan Guarantee Program is it works best with long-term kinds of utility, kind of grade projects like transmission lines, like power plants, like pipelines. It's not a great fit for extraction, it's not a great fit for mines and it's not a great fit for upstream oil and gas. And so maintain, build, capitalize that, use that, leverage the. You know the kahunas out of that one. But we do need a couple other tools in the toolbox. So what I hope this next government may do they've talked about a first first nations resource charge where they give up some but the federal government tax take that's fine, I think, some Indigenous specific investment tax credits, royalty credits, royalties, trust structures. I prefer anything where the proponent and the Indigenous community can negotiate it themselves and not have to apply for government things or get approved by the government, because I think it goes faster that way. But in general, you know, if we can all come up with three or four different kinds of incentives, programs that would align industry and Indigenous benefits, I think that's good.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Number five is on critical minerals. So what would I do for my impact assessment act? I've been focusing less on energy, transition metals, battery metals because of demand for EVs and certain yada yada. But in terms of a security aspect, our dependence on Chinese critical minerals for defense supply chain. It's usually not the big money makers, it's usually not the zinc or the copper or the nickel or the iron I'm worried about. It's usually kind of the bespoke niche metals that are often byproducts of those. So now I'm talking about rare earth elements, I'm talking about germanium, I'm talking about gallium, I'm talking about scandium, those things that are not really economic on their own, those small markets and China has cornered the market on processing them. But we need them and it's big leverage that China has been using and using as export restrictions. So I would like to use Department of Defense spending, d&d spending, part of our 2% GDP spend to meet our NATO requirements, to help things like tech in Trilobc, I would say Rio Tinto in Quebec, everywhere where we're processing kind of these things that have a big market, to help them process those niche commodities that have a small market that we actually need for a defense supply chain. There's about a dozen that NATO identifies that you need for a supply chain. So that would help get our processing going and also protect our security.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And then the last one is transportation. We all know, you know, we've seen the railroad strikes. Every time, you know, labor negotiations come up, just the entire country just brazes itself. This is not sustainable. We all know, you know, we've seen the railroad strikes. Every time, you know, labor negotiations come up, just the entire country just brazes itself. This is not sustainable. It's not of the national interest.
Heather Exner-Pirot:If we need to use our resources for our soft and hard power and to expand our economy, we can't be held hostage by labor action at ports and railroads. And so, using some more tools in the toolbox again with the Canadian Labour Code, the one I suggest that I think might be reasonable, that came up in the last stoppage, was for the Canadian Labour Code to be changed so that the government can impose binding arbitration before a work stoppage occurs. And so it's not to take away union rights, it's not to reduce their ability to negotiate with their employers, but before a work stoppage. We don't need to wait a couple of days into the work stoppage to start using some of these tools.
Stewart Muir:And when you look at supply chains and the complexity of ports and transportation and the expectation that the world can acquire the things it needs from Canada, is your position in number six on binding arbitration kind of a signifier of just how important it is to be able to satisfy what the world expects from Canada?
Heather Exner-Pirot:Yeah, I mean, there's an economic side, for sure that you want to be a reliable supplier. You know that if you're, if you're, you know producing food goods or some you know mineral product, that you want your customer to be happy on the other side of the world. But also to the point that we're talking about things that are very important to people's well-being, when we're talking about grains, when we're talking about metals, when we're talking about propane, what have you? You can't be playing political games with these things. And so if we want to make some hate and again we have an opportunity here One of our biggest competitors, by the way, the United States, is a competitor on a lot of commodities.
Heather Exner-Pirot:They're not looking as reliable maybe as Canada is right now. They're doing you know kind of a lot of things. We can compete with them head to head on some of these things, compete with Russia, Compete with China, which you know we want to reduce their market share. So let's be, let's make it as easy as possible for our allies and for those who are non-aligned to choose a Canadian product versus a product from someone that I don't think is as benign to world interests as we are.
Stewart Muir:Heather, this has been a fascinating discussion. You've covered so much ground. Your view of the world is so practical and rooted in the facts of the world is so practical and rooted in the facts.
Stewart Muir:I'd love to end on a upbeat note, because I know that when you engage with audiences that I've been in and even people will tell me have you seen that? Heather Exner- Pirro she's such a great speaker. I know that in what you research and share, there's actually an incredibly positive vision for the future. Research and share there's actually an incredibly positive vision for the future and I want to leave the impression, as we bring this episode to a close, that you are actually an incredibly optimistic and positive and inclusive thinker, and I'd like you to help me bring that home here.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Well, thanks so much, stuart, for the kind words and I yeah, you know I respect so much what you do, because this is why I love resource development.
Heather Exner-Pirot:This is why I love resources and think about commodities of my sleep is because I think Canada has good values and interests.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I think the rest of the world will benefit from having access to energy, minerals and food that it can purchase from somebody who is not an authoritarian state, it's not a superpower that is going to have strings attached, but it's someone that just can provide you the basic essentials that your people need in a way that is fair, that is ethical and is pretty good environmental pedigree as well, and that at home, that doing that good in the world, providing things that people need in a responsible, reliable way, actually increases our own prosperity at home.
Heather Exner-Pirot:And, like I say, there don't need to be losers in resource development. We are so rich in this country, we have such an abundance, we've been blessed. I don't want any poor First Nations, I don't want any poor Inuit communities, and they don't have to be if they can also leverage their resources and they can work with industry to leverage their resources to gain that wealth, get those jobs, get those revenues, build that infrastructure, all the things that Canada's resource sector has given to us. So if I'm pragmatic, it's because I'm from Saskatchewan and we always say, you know, get her done.
Stewart Muir:Well, that's true, those from Saskatchewan and we have lots on the West Coast where I'm here in Vancouver are making this a better place, practical problem solvers, and we're lucky to have them. And you, so I really appreciate that you've inspired and challenged us. I hope you're challenging people, because the show is called Power Struggle, because these things aren't easy. We struggle inside ourselves, sometimes amongst each other, between each other, and because of people like you, I think we're resolving that struggle in a good place.
Heather Exner-Pirot:I hope so. Yeah, we can hope. I think in the medium term all this nonsense will actually turn out to be pretty good for Canada. Shake us out of our complacency a bit, since wax has turned out to be pretty good for Canada.
Stewart Muir:Shake us out of our complacency a bit. Well, I'm happy that's a likely outcome in your view, so we'll come back to you in future and see how it's unfolding. So we've had Heather Exner Pirro here today and I'm Stuart Muir with Power Struggle. Thanks for tuning in.
Heather Exner-Pirot:Super. Thanks so much, Stuart.
