Power Struggle
Improving the energy dialogue in Canada (and beyond) through honest, non-partisan, and fact- based conversations.
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Power Struggle
The Energy Lie Canadians Believe—And Why The World Disagrees // Shannon Joseph
Shannon Joseph once dreamed of being an astronaut, but ultimately chose to tackle humanity's most pressing challenges right here on Earth.
With over 15 years of experience in energy, sustainability, and Indigenous relations, Shannon has shaped major federal policies like the Impact Assessment Act and the UNDRIP Act. As Chair of Energy for a Secure Future, she is leading a critical conversation about how Canada can balance energy development, environmental responsibility, and economic growth.
"In Canada, we assume energy will always be affordable and reliable. But we should not assume. We need to be cold-blooded about the numbers and whether this will actually work." – Shannon Joseph
Recorded 12/12/2024
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I'll bet there's people watching this saying hello, you're not talking about the biggest issue climate.
Shannon Joseph:That is the biggest issue for people who have solved their own energy issue. It's the biggest issue until your lights go out and it's 40 degrees Celsius. It's the biggest issue until you don't have the power you need to disinfect medical instruments. Then something else is the biggest issue To the people listening who are like oh my God, why are you going on about all this? Expensive or not expensive, Don't you know we're all going to die in 12 years and I don't want to caricature that because these are important concerns. I guess what I'm saying is we should not tell ourselves in Canada, where we have energy security that relies on energy that we want to deny to other countries. We shouldn't tell ourselves that, just because we have energy comfort and can think that this is the biggest issue, that it's everyone's biggest issue. And if we don't help other countries address their biggest issue, which is keeping the lights on 24 7 if people need it, having the energy they need all the time the environmental issue is not going to be addressed as efficiently as it could be.
Stewart Muir:Welcome to Power Struggle. I'm Stuart Muir. Shannon Joseph has spent over 15 years at the intersection of energy sustainability and indigenous relations. She's one of those rare people who sees the big picture but never loses sight of the human impact. She's one of those rare people who sees the big picture but never loses sight of the human impact. She's motivated by the strong conviction that energy is about people and that abundant, affordable, low-emission energy is a precondition for growing the middle class, protecting the environment and, in Canada, advancing reconciliation. Simply put, shannon gets things done. Shannon Joseph, welcome to Power Struggle.
Shannon Joseph:Thank you very much.
Stewart Muir:I heard you wanted to be an astronaut when you were young. Is that true?
Shannon Joseph:That's true. I did want to be an astronaut. I used to watch a lot of Star Trek and I thought this looks like a great job. But I'm busy enough on Earth now I don't need to go to space.
Stewart Muir:When did you decide? Going to space wasn't for you.
Shannon Joseph:I, you know, I decided when I'm from Quebec originally and I was in CEGEP and I took a political and social ethics course and got kind of my eyes open to political issues, economic issues at the time, you know, issues of free trade and all of these things and is it benefiting people, and I was very opinionated. That's when I started to care more about trying to do things in the real world and really having a focus on, well, how do we end poverty for people, like, how do we make life better on Earth? And I ended up going into civil engineering so that I could, you know, build wells in Africa, as if people didn't know how to build wells. And really the issues of that are so much bigger and that's what I've come to learn as I've gone on my personal kind of career journey. That led to the energy for a secure future.
Stewart Muir:I've heard you say many times that energy is about people. It's not just resources, engineering or policy.
Shannon Joseph:And also you've talked about how it changes lives. Bring us into that had buildings, pyramids, coliseums is because human beings ate food and then would be made to drag rocks and plow fields and do all of the work, and so life was short, brutish and something else. I don't know what philosopher said that Things were harder and as people have had access to more modern forms of energy, they can get a machine to plow the field and they can get a machine to lift the concrete and build the buildings and go to space and do all the things of modern life. And I think people take for granted that. You know, today we live for a long time. That's because we have refrigerators and refrigerators are made of products that come out of modern energy, that require modern energy.
Shannon Joseph:We eat every day in Canada, even though we have winter six months a year at least in the part of Canada I live because we can bring food from around the world affordably because of energy, and so there's just so much that isn't invisible, but it is done by energy and it makes people's lives longer and the more energy people have, the better they live, and you can see that by the data. Like you know, the people in what's called the West and North America, et cetera, use the most energy in the world, and you know, as you go down the standard of living ladder in the world, people are using less and less energy and their lives are harder, and so the more we can get affordable abundant energy to more people, the better our lives will be, and that's really important.
Stewart Muir:This observation you've made. When you hear it, of course, it's so obvious. Is it resonating with people?
Shannon Joseph:I think it's starting to. But I also think that a lot of people just aren't aware they don't have contact with it. They become more aware of it when they don't have it. They become more aware of it when it's expensive. And you know that's too bad that you got to kind of have those experiences to appreciate energy. But you know, I have a. I work with a gentleman who grew up in India and he said when he was growing up and it's still the case today there are a lot of power failures. And he said, when the power fails, and it's 40 degrees Celsius, all you want is power, no matter how you get it. And so I think you know there are people in Canada with those experiences who also, I think could share that with others who maybe have not had those experiences and could learn from that.
Stewart Muir:Shanna, your career has spanned environmental engineering, municipal climate programs, indigenous relations. It's an incredible range. How has working across so many fields shaped your particular vision?
Shannon Joseph:So I think that what it's shaped the most is my belief that problems need to be solved closest to the people who are affected by them.
Shannon Joseph:The solution needs to be developed by those who are most affected by the solutions and, even though you know nothing's perfect, that'll increase your odds of getting a good solution or a better solution than if the decisions are made far away and so on. The municipal piece. When we worked on issues around environment, it was everything from emissions to water treatment to solid waste management, et cetera, and the solution you got in St John, new Brunswick was different from what you could get in Iqaluit from Vancouver. You know it was right sized to those places. You know one of the tough things in today's society is the decisions that are made by the central government and the way it impacts other people in other parts of the country, other regions, other industries, and it creates these huge tensions. And I think the more you can devolve that locally, to a province, to a municipality, the more you get a resilient, a right size and a resilient solution to whatever the issue is you're trying to work on.
Stewart Muir:Recently I read an article. It was the headline the bill is coming for net zero. And it's a great headline. It makes you want to figure out. You know, we know what net zero is, but I didn't know there was a bill coming. I thought we have to pay for that. I thought then, what was your point in that particular commentary?
Shannon Joseph:Yeah, it's so funny because I was testifying at Parliament on the government's clean electricity strategy and regulation and you know, when you testify in Parliament you can never quite say what you want to say, because the MPs are trying to say what they want to say.
Stewart Muir:Yeah, you're there for their needs. What you want to say, because the MPs are trying to say what they want to say.
Shannon Joseph:Yeah, you're there for their needs, that's right. And so I decided to write this article to say the things I wanted to say, and it is that in the conversation in Canada around net zero and climate more generally and, by extension, energy and again, energy is everything. It's why we eat every day, it's what turns the lights on, etc. We were never talking about what it takes to do some of the things that are being proposed, and we were never looking at anything we had learned in real life from running energy systems until now, and so Energy for a Secure Future had done a paper called Getting Canada's Energy Future Right and it looked at end use energy. So how do people use energy in their house, how do they use it at their school or some other institutions, and what does industry do with energy and what have we learned in the last 20 years that will help us know what we can expect or what we should anticipate getting out to 2050, which is only 25 years from now, and you know the things that we should know.
Shannon Joseph:And what I want to talk about in that article is that today, electricity only does 20 percent of the energy job for Canadians. So that's number one. Most people in this country, including in provinces like Quebec and in British Columbia that are hydro provinces they're still a majority using oil and gas directly to meet their energy needs. And the other thing people don't realize is that most of the energy in Canada, just like most of the energy in most countries, are used by industry, and the important thing about that is that's everybody's job. So if it becomes too expensive or if the way we try to achieve our emission reductions goals ends up making energy expensive, either for industries or for ordinary people, there's a double cost to that. Because you know if you have to build a new hydro dam or if you have to build whatever else, that goes on power bills or somewhere the tax bill to pay for that, and if you have to put too much of that on your industry and they start to be uncompetitive with their American competitors or their Asian competitors, their job's going to go there, and then you can't pay that bill because you don't have a job anymore. Bob's going to go there, and then you can't pay that bill because you don't have a job anymore. And that means that the whole road to wherever we're going needs to acknowledge trade-offs, needs to acknowledge that there are some things we might have to do first and get that to work really well before we do something else. And the other thing it needs to acknowledge is that and I spoke about this in parliament we just need more energy. Everybody's really excited about AI, but AI increases energy demand by orders of magnitude as the more you bring it on, and so we're not just talking about like transitioning or transforming or whatever.
Shannon Joseph:In order to have the quality of life we have with a growing population, we just need more, and if we want it to be different, that's going to be expensive, because you just have to build a lot of stuff. There's no way around it. You have to pay the workers who are going to do the work. You have to buy the material that's going to be used to build the stuff. That stuff all gets paid for first, and then you ostensibly get the benefits, but you're also getting the bill. And so let's talk about that and let's let the Canadian people decide what is. How do we want to approach this? What are tradeoffs that are going to be acceptable to us so that we have that resilient future that we want? We have a future with jobs, a future with a good quality of life.
Stewart Muir:There's so many directions to go in from what you just said, Shannon. What do you think the average Canadian thinks net zero is?
Shannon Joseph:Oh, I think they don't really know about it and they don't think about it until they are asked. And I think maybe the term might be surrounded by good feelings if they've heard good things about it, bad feelings if they, you know, have heard bad things about it. But I think people don't really know and the truth is, in legislation and we have net zero legislation in Canada there is no definition of net zero. Like there's kind of a definition but like, when you get down to it, what does it really mean? Because for some people in Canada net zero means zero and for other people it's net and their version of net means something else. And so I think that's another challenge with that whole issue is there's like a word out there but nobody really knows what that word means, like as an objective, but then nobody knows what it means to implement it either.
Stewart Muir:Well, I'm starting to wonder if, given that there's 200 countries, 200 odd countries in the world and Canada is just one of them there are countries that are different stages of what they're doing in energy. Maybe energy poverty is a reality, maybe they have energy wealth and they're starting to do net zero things. My question for you is are there countries that we could be looking at that are examples of we should go there and also of countries where maybe we shouldn't go there in terms of you know the example they're setting?
Shannon Joseph:Yeah, so because you know, ultimately this is all comes down to energy and how it's used. Every country is going to be different, because every country starts off with different resources. Canada has so much energy we have oil and gas, obviously. We have lots of water, and that's allowed us to have hydropower. We have one of the most important uranium deposits in the world, so we have nuclear Ontario's 60 percent nuclear electricity and so I think, for us, energy means one thing and transforming energy means another thing, because we truly have lots of options at our disposal, so much so that we're also an energy exporter.
Shannon Joseph:Most of the countries that we deal with are not in that situation. Japan imports over 90 percent of the energy it uses, and that's true for Korea, south Korea as well. Europe also has a lot of energy importing, and so their economies are not about exporting energy, they're about making stuff and exporting stuff. Now, of course, making that stuff requires energy to remain cheap, and what Europe is currently experiencing on their road to get to one part of your question, is that if you pursue some of these policies in a certain way, energy gets really expensive, and so Germany, as an example, industry is facing a lot of high energy costs and they're leaving. You know, deindustrialization is a problem not just for them but in many parts of Europe, and that is a very direct function of the way energy has become more expensive as they've shifted the balance from traditional energy to renewable energy or, you know, wind and solar, without necessarily dealing with some of the technical challenges that come with that, like the need to store energy when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, which actually happens quite a bit, and it also happens at the inopportune times, like when it's the coldest. That's the day the wind won't blow, you know. And so I think Canada needs to learn that those problems can't be kind of brushed aside when you're planning. You need to, and that acknowledging them doesn't mean you're against wind or you're against something, but you're acknowledging that this technology works this way, it has limitations, and you've got to pay to manage the limitations of this technology. And so are you prepared to pay for that? And do you know how you're going to do that? Because if your economy really depends on manufacturing, you don't figure that out properly, you're not going to be a manufacturer anymore, so at least that should answer one part. Who's doing it right?
Shannon Joseph:I've spent a lot of time now meeting countries, leaders from countries in the Asia-Pacific Vietnam, south Korea, japan, taiwan recently and they never look at kind of the climate issue or, you know, the emissions issue, without also looking at supply and ensuring the OAS has security, supply diversification. So am I? Am I getting 50 percent of my energy from Russia or from the Middle East, or from one? Like? How do I diversify so that I as a country am not at the mercy of any particular country? I have options.
Shannon Joseph:All of those things are absolutely important because if the day you don't have your energy supply, every other consideration goes out the window, and so I think a smart approach is one that acknowledges diversity, that energy plays this vital role in people's lives and we have to always have it.
Shannon Joseph:It has to be affordable and the supply needs to be secure, and then we want it to have the least environmental impacts that it can have, and we always have to solve for those things at the same time, and, in my view, in Canada we haven't always tried to solve for all those things at the same time.
Shannon Joseph:I think we've assumed it'll always be affordable, we assume it's always going to be reliable, and we haven't always tried to solve for all those things at the same time. I think we've assumed it'll always be affordable, we assume it's always going to be reliable, and we shouldn't assume things. We should make sure that we're really cold-blooded when we look at the numbers of whether this is going to play out the way we want, and we should take things in an approach that allows us to test, succeed, test, fail, course correct, so that we don't end up with some of the challenges Europe has experienced, but actually create a position for Canada where we are resilient as a country and we are positioned to help other countries, because most countries, as I said, don't have the energy we have need that energy for their people, but also for their security.
Stewart Muir:Have you ever said to someone in Canada you know you're really complacent Things could go badly if you're not careful. And what is the reaction being if you've said anything like that?
Shannon Joseph:When you say things like that to people, they don't like that.
Shannon Joseph:No, I guess not that to people they don't like that. No, I guess not. No, I mean, I think I really try to position all of this stuff in a positive way. We have a lot of resources and there's an important role we can play in the world and people are aware. I think people kind of put things in a box there's like a climate box, there's a geopolitical box, there's an affordable groceries box and they don't always see the connection between these boxes.
Shannon Joseph:And I think what myself and the other people that I work with, and especially the Energy for a Secure Network, which includes a lot of individual leaders but also organizations is connect those boxes and say you know, if we could actually get this right in Canada, we would live better and we could really help others around the world and raise the stature of our country.
Shannon Joseph:And you know a lot of the international work I do. I also do with the First Nations leaders and organizations who are part of Energy for a Secure Futures Network and beyond, like MFriends, because a lot of those leaders understand kind of the real things of life, like when you don't have affordable energy, what does this mean for your community on reserve, for example, when you don't have access to trade and your own economic export opportunities. What does that mean for your ability to provide the things your nation wants? And so you know I work with the First Nations LNG Alliance, the Indigenous Resource Network, the First Nations Power Authority and others who, again, are all about striking that balance, because they know the cost of not striking that balance. And you know, part of that positive story for Canada on energy is reconciliation and I think that's an important thing also for most Canadians to know that they don't know.
Stewart Muir:You've mentioned security a few times. In fact, it's in the name of your organization, Secure Future. What does energy security mean to you?
Shannon Joseph:Energy security to me means having the energy you need when you need it at a price you can afford. And you know, for a country like Canada, because we have so much domestically, we can just figure out. You know two of those things because we know one of them is guaranteed Like we have it, how do we get it to people consistently at a price that they can afford? But again, because of who Canada, because of the resources we have, we can help other countries with that. That's a positive global role we can play. And for many countries in the world, they don't have the energy, they can't guarantee that they can get it affordably, and so they want partners to help them guarantee those things.
Shannon Joseph:When Russia first invaded Ukraine and Russia is a major global oil and gas supplier, you know Europe put sanctions on them. They're like, ok, we don't want this anymore, but now where are we going to get our energy? And so they just went on what is called the spot market and said we'll pay anything for you to send us your natural gas. And so ships bound for Asia, you know, based on long term contracts literally turned around in the ocean and went back so that they can bring all that energy to Europe and Asia was like, oh my gosh, what do we do now? And a lot of them started burning more coal, which is higher emitting, like all these things, that until that point there had also been a big divestment movement. There kind of is, let's divest from oil and gas, we don't need it anymore. And it's like guess what? When people couldn't get it, they just burned coal because they're never going to let their people not have energy, and so you know.
Shannon Joseph:Another interesting thing that happened is that you know China, as an example, has a lot of energy flexibility, so they had long term gas contracts and they just switched their power plants to coal and sold the gas to Europe and sold the gas to other people to coal, and sold the gas to Europe and sold the gas to other people. And so, anyway, it's just very interesting. But it speaks to the fundamental importance of energy and why countries are looking for partners who can be a reliable supplier and partner in their security and, of course, in their economic development, and that's good for Canada, that would be good for those countries.
Stewart Muir:Would you say that's something that's happened since the Russia invasion of Ukraine occurred, this perception of security?
Shannon Joseph:I think security has taken on a serious importance since Russia's invasion of Ukraine that it did not have Before. If you brought up energy security, energy affordability in many conversations, you'd be called a climate denier or someone who didn't take these environmental issues seriously. Because why are you talking about these costs or things like that? Why are you speaking negatively about the strategy we have? And then you know, suddenly we're hit with a war that we didn't expect and the fallout from that ended up being an energy which people didn't expect and it made real again like that. This is not an issue that can be ignored, nor can affordability be ignored, and I think that's a good thing, because it makes the conversation move from the theoretical and the aspirational to the real. Let's get real about what we're doing. Let's get real about how we're going to pay for it, how fast we can do it, etc.
Stewart Muir:The United States, right beside Canada, close neighbor, set aside today's politics, whatever, fundamentally, two nations that exist happily and have done for centuries as nations and pre-nations no-transcript. I'm tormented by something I cannot answer. How is it that Americans, including the American left you know the Democratic Party is so at ease with being an energy superpower? John Kerry, the climate czar of the United States of America, will talk freely about how important it is for energy security in the world that American energy is out there on those markets, whereas you cannot get the Canadian prime minister or many other leaders to even talk about this topic, even though we're pretty important in the energy world not an energy superpower, because there's some kind of cultural impediment to having that conversation in Canada. So how is it that President Biden has a kind of green halo as this environmental president and yet under his presidency America truly became the superpower? Things were happening before he came along, but it was really on his watch, right.
Shannon Joseph:And Obama's watch.
Stewart Muir:And Obama's watch, absolutely. So what is going on here? That we have these two different characters in the same domain of energy security?
Shannon Joseph:Yeah, I think that the United States has been a direct recipient of energy as a tool of geopolitical power and maybe I don't remember the OPEC crisis, but it was a crisis, and I was reading an article recently that was apparently Richard Nixon was telling people not to put on their Christmas lights and so they have experienced other countries using their influence through energy to squeeze their geopolitical rivals, and they also, as a country, I think, play a security role. Right, it's the US Navy that guards a lot of the shipping routes for all the stuff that we buy on Amazon and all our food and all, et cetera, and so I think they're alive to the fact that you can't just look at environment as an issue and not security or whatever else, that all of these things exist together in the world and need to be dealt with together to get it right. I think it's always been a kind of a bipartisan thing that the United States wants to seek energy independence, and that's just. States wants to seek energy independence, and that's just been completely uncontroversial. And when they found a way to do it, which was, you know, the shale revolution, as they call it they just went for it. Every administration has gone for it and you know it's been to their benefit.
Shannon Joseph:And a lot of people talk about how the United States and Canada started at the same place in 2015 with zero LNG export facilities and now the US has like eight of them and they're building more and we are about to have one, which is great, and we have some others that have been approved.
Shannon Joseph:But I think because Canada has not been on the receiving end of some of those geopolitical attacks and really had to take them in, and has not been kind of on all those front lines from a security perspective, or maybe our political leaders have not kind of felt drawn into that, I think it's meant that we maybe can be more idealized in the way we look at things. But I think even that is changing, and I think, certainly with the newly elected American administration, the Trump administration if Canada is not thinking seriously about these things, I think he's going to make us think about them more, because it's in the US interest for Canada to think about it more. And I think it's in our interest to think about it more because there's actually a huge opportunity for us if we could play the role that we have the capacity to play.
Stewart Muir:What's an example of how President Trump and his administration might have that influence on Canada?
Shannon Joseph:Well, I mean, everybody's been talking about the tariff thing and that's been presented as a border issue, but our number one export to the United States is oil, and we provide about 7% of the gas that they have in their system, some of which is exported through their LNG facilities. You know, who knows how he might decide to put pressure on us, but I think the point is he's already putting pressure on us for other issues and if he doesn't want the United States, as this energy superpower, to carry all of the weight of trying to rebalance things politically from an energy standpoint, he might put other kinds of pressure. I mean, it could be viewed as pressure or not, or an opportunity Right, isn't? The risk and opportunity is the same character, or something, so I think. But whatever it is, it's going to force a conversation and a change that can be taken advantage of, I think for the good, in Canada and in a way that would advance the things that we care about as a country and as people.
Stewart Muir:You mentioned some countries in Asia that are important to you. Maybe you've visited there in your travels. Japan what is their outlook on Canada and energy and security for Japan and the world today?
Shannon Joseph:So, again, japan imports over 90% of its energy and has lots of suppliers, including the US, but the Middle East, and you know they still buy a little bit from Russia and they're very interested in working with Canada because they want that diversity of supply. We're closer to them, we could ship it to them at lower cost. So I think you know, just from that security of supply standpoint, japan is interested in energy partners because of its geography. They don't have, you know, lots of places for a large scale wind, like all the people kind of live here, and in the middle is mountains and you can't do it. And so they're looking at what are our options, and for them, nuclear had been a really important part of their portfolio After the Fukushima disaster in 2010,.
Shannon Joseph:The population there is scared of nuclear and it actually had an effect in neighboring countries like Taiwan, which also decided to phase out nuclear. And so, squaring all of this with their Japan has a goal to be net zero by 2050. It was like squaring that with constraints on what energy sources could be used, the fact that they don't have those energy sources domestically. They're looking at LNG as an important source. They're looking at ammonia as an important energy that could be used to reduce the emissions intensity of their coal plants, for example, which they don't want to phase out early because they just need more energy, just like everybody else. And so, yeah, japan's looking for partners, and Japan also plays an important regional role. They work with other countries to build power plants, to build LNG intake facilities, to build other infrastructure as part of supporting the energy security of the region, and so they're also looking regionally. You know it's good for the region if the region has Canada and other friendly countries as partners on the energy issue.
Stewart Muir:If you took one thing from the perspective of Japan or Korea or Taiwan and suggest to Canadians that they adopted that because it would make them better off, what would one thing be that Canadians could take away?
Shannon Joseph:Canadians. What should we do differently? We should do things. We should build things. I think Canada spends a lot of time thinking about whether to do something and we should be thinking we're going to do things and then we can think how do we do them in a good way? And I think that's a very different conversation about whether we do it. We need to decide that we want to be that partner and then think about how do we become that partner.
Stewart Muir:Good advice. You've talked about your municipal work, so very different from that high level international diplomacy and security. This is delivering services to people in their homes. What do you think the currents are there right now? We're taping today in Vancouver. Only a short time ago there was a lively debate around banning natural gas. This has been quite a divisive thing for residents in Vancouver. I think it's quite unpopular. At least if you go by the polling, I think 57% of residents oppose banning natural gas because, unlike some places, you know, in Quebec not a lot of people have natural gas in their homes. There's lots in industry, but in Vancouver it's like 90% very heavy reliance. It's like 90% very heavy reliance. So you know people have used, they're familiar with the product, they've used it in their lives. Is this a common situation? I mean, what would you say to residents of Vancouver? I mean it's going to be a real impact on their quality of life.
Shannon Joseph:What is it going to cost to heat your house with electricity as opposed to natural gas? And the answer is it's more expensive to heat space with electricity than it is with natural gas, at least in British Columbia. And as you build more infrastructure that has to be paid for. I don't see your electricity getting cheaper because of it. Maybe it will, who knows? But that hasn't been the experience in other jurisdictions. They need to think about the fact that their energy demand is going up because they're doing more things with energy, and you know AI was one example of that before.
Shannon Joseph:It has never gone down yet. Maybe it will, but so far we see efficiency gains. So we see, you know, maybe energy per person going down, but total energy continuing to go up because there's more people. Canada's population went up by two million people, or something like that in the last few years. There was more people Using more, they're using more stuff, so we just need more.
Shannon Joseph:The other thing is so last year there was this very cold week in the prairies where it was like minus 50 in Alberta in particular, and there was a day when Alberta's electric system almost was like overwhelmed and they said it to everyone please use less electricity. And the things went down. But Alberta also got electricity from Saskatchewan and from British Columbia, and Premier Eby kind of talked about that. You know we were able to send them I don't know how much electricity to help them out. Fantastic, that day that they sent that extra electricity. Bc had something like two-thirds of the energy being used in the province was direct natural gas. If that all had to be replaced by electricity, doing that, replacing that, would be very expensive, but in the meantime they wouldn't have been able to give anybody any extra electricity. And so does the public know that? Does the public know that having those different streams of energy put them in a position to help other people with their electricity, because they could rely on gas directly for home heating, which is also a cheaper home heating solution?
Shannon Joseph:I don't think people think about that and I don't think politicians present things in that way, and that is unfortunate, because you're not putting to people the tradeoffs associated with a given policy.
Shannon Joseph:It's like we're going to save the climate, rip out this thing, pay $30,000,. Given policy, it's like we're going to save the climate, rip out this thing, pay $30,000. And then it's going to be amazing, except that at a household level it's going to be expensive to change that thing and it might be more expensive to heat your home in the long term because you've now changed a higher cost energy solution. Now you know there are numbers on heat pumps and I think maybe Vancouver could be a good place to use that, where you could save energy. But in places where it gets much colder, which is the whole rest of the country and the rest of British Columbia, I don't know if people are going to save money with some of the solutions that are being put forward, and so I think we just have to be really clear eyed put forward, and so I think we just have to be really clear eyed.
Stewart Muir:I'll bet there's people watching this saying, hello, you're not talking about the biggest issue climate.
Shannon Joseph:That is the biggest issue for people who have solved their own energy issue, and you know the reason. Some of the other countries I work with are very pragmatic OK, we want LNG, we need this, we want to keep our coal and just make it less emissions intensive is because they haven't. They don't have a guaranteed energy answer. It's the biggest issue until your lights go out and it's 40 degrees Celsius. It's the biggest issue until you don't have the power you need to disinfect medical instruments. Then something else is the biggest issue. And so you know, to those, to the people listening, who are like, oh my God, why are you going on about all this expensive or not expensive? Don't you know we're all going to die in 12 years or whatever it is, and I don't want to caricature that because you know these are important concerns that people have for the environment.
Shannon Joseph:I guess what I'm saying is, if we are, we should not tell ourselves in Canada, where we have energy security an energy security that relies on energy that we want to deny to other countries we haven't even been able to stop using them.
Shannon Joseph:We shouldn't tell ourselves that, just because we have energy comfort and can think that this is the biggest issue, that it's everyone's biggest issue, and if we don't help other countries address their biggest issue, which is keeping the lights on 24-7, if people need it, having the energy they need all the time then the environmental issue is not going to be maybe addressed as efficiently as it could be.
Shannon Joseph:Because there's a big world out there. There are countries with billions of people who don't have energy security and they're going to use whatever energy they have available to them to get that energy security and they want to pay an affordable price for it it. So how are we going to help do something about that, so that we can do something about the bigger question of making it overall less environmentally impactful? Because there is one atmosphere there's not a Canadian atmosphere, there's not a British Columbia atmosphere and there are a lot of jurisdictions that end up exporting their emissions to other countries because they stop making things where they are and their emissions go down and they just import it from somewhere else. That's not really an answer if you're worried about the global environment and the atmosphere and all of that. We got to think holistically about the drivers of the demand for energy, the options that are available and how do we make it less impactful to the environment without losing the ball on having people live better.
Stewart Muir:Exporting emissions. That might be a confusing phrase. What do you mean exactly?
Shannon Joseph:Yeah, so I think a couple of years ago there was reported that the United Kingdom had reduced their emissions by like 27% from like 2005 levels, something like that, and we're celebrated for that.
Shannon Joseph:But what that meant in practice was a lot of things that were made in the UK, notably steel, stopped being made in the UK and the UK started importing it because their energy was higher cost. They couldn't make those things locally anymore, and so, yeah, you have less emissions. You had fewer jobs for people in those areas of the country. And then you're importing that steel from a country that burns higher emitting fuels than you, and so you haven't actually reduced the impact to the environment. You just sent the thing somewhere else and in doing that, had a higher emission impact, because now you're burning a higher emitting fuel somewhere else, and then you're putting the product on a boat when it could have been made in your own country and you're paying energy to move it to where you are. So there are things that have looked like victories on this that actually don't, because you're just exporting the environmental impacts you don't want to have in your own country.
Stewart Muir:One thing that I think is bubbling up here is in Canada you often hear terms like climate leadership, that if you do something or you set an aspirational goal of whatever, it is sure you might not get to that goal, but you want to do it because others will look to Canada and say, well, that's what they're doing. So we here in India or China we got to do what they're doing in Canada. We feel guilty that we're not following those Canadians going to net zero or banning natural gas in Vancouver. Do you think that's an effective way to change the world?
Shannon Joseph:Well, I just think anyone who says that should then tell us who exactly is following us, because we've been climate leaders or whatever other like who? Where has that actually happened? Is there anyone who did something because we were doing it? Or are they doing it because of their own national interest and situation and economic goals and social goals, Like why would a country? And social goals, Like why would a country you know, like India, say, oh, you know, we're not going to do this because Canada, a country with a completely different reality, is doing something else? I mean, I don't know. I think it's important to have evidence.
Stewart Muir:Okay, Well, suppose that same country you mentioned India, suppose India was able to acquire some of that sought after LNG you've talked about get it from Canada, so it can maybe not use as much coal. Do you think they might see that as climate leadership?
Shannon Joseph:Oh, india would see that as climate leadership. India would see that as a kind of leadership period. Good, this is just good. It's not just good because it's good for the environment is just good. It's not just good because it's good for the environment, it's good because it's good for us, because now our people have more energy than we did before and now our air is cleaner because we're burning a cleaner fuel. You know, in terms of the global emissions picture I think it was Banque Nationale, national Bank, I don't know they put out a report showing India's trajectory, which was to significantly increase coal-fired production. They wouldn't have to have that trajectory and the emissions that come with it if they could get our LNG. And because of the scale we're talking about, in a country of that size, it makes a huge difference globally to what ends up being out in the world from an emissions standpoint.
Stewart Muir:So let me see if I can put this together. The things that we're doing, or at least some of the things we're doing in Canada that some people in Canada think make them climate leaders and respected by the world, aren't seen that way by the world, but the things we're not doing, that other parts of the world would see us as climate leaders for remain something that might happen in the future or might not.
Shannon Joseph:Yeah. So I would say that countries have been coming to Canada both from Europe and from Asia asking us for our LNG because for them it means energy security and it means a lower emission energy solution in contexts where they just need more energy and they know it. They're not kind of speculating. And from an emission standpoint, getting them that energy is reducing the emissions intensity of those economies. Avoiding emissions, which is kind of the number one kind of thing you want to do. It avoids emissions growth.
Shannon Joseph:The failure to acknowledge that in Canada, among some in the environmental community, I think comes from maybe not believing some of those countries when they say what their constraints are, maybe not knowing and never having had those conversations and believing that there's some kind of alternative that if only these guys knew. Somebody said to me we shouldn't be helping those countries get LNG, we should be helping them do renewables. We should help Japan get renewables and you know Japan is a country that makes more stuff that is imported to Canada than the other way around. They don't need us to tell them how to do anything. You know what I mean. But they're a mountainous country. We're doing some of that large scale.
Shannon Joseph:Wind or solar can't deliver the energy they need, period, and you can not like that or you can be frustrated by that, but it is a fact. It is a fact of geography. They don't have some other land nearby where they could put all this stuff and then put a power line to their country. It's just, it's not an option. And so in Canada, we have to listen to other countries when they say this is what we need, these are our constraints geographically, politically or whatever else and we need you to do. You want to work with us, and I think if we say yes to working with them, it means putting aside our prejudices about what the answer should be.
Stewart Muir:Thinking about the new administration in the United States, do you think there's going to be a let's call it a Trump doctrine on energy, and how does Canada fit into that view of the world?
Shannon Joseph:I do think that and this is just based on, you know, reading articles I do think that the incoming US administration wants to avoid the United States getting tied up into hot conflicts.
Shannon Joseph:Like you know, they're famously isolationist. I think they want to find a way to kind of negotiate a solution to Ukraine, negotiate a solution wherever else, because they don't want American soldiers getting killed in other wars. They don't want these protracted conflicts. To the extent that energy can be a tool in such conflicts and energy has certainly been a tool in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and has impacted allies of Ukraine and Europe in their ability to respond I think if Canada, the United States and Mexico, all three of whom are energy producing countries, got together and say let's make a strategy for the continent and how we will work together on our energy security for our area, our region, and ensuring that that energy is affordable, reliable and low in its environmental impact, and that's how we're going to work together to do that for our friends, and that this is a shared strategy, I think that could be something very of interest not only to the United States but also to Mexico, and could be an opportunity for Canadian leadership in that conversation.
Stewart Muir:I'd just like to shift gears to a topic that, in your public speaking that I've seen is clearly one that means a lot to you, and that's Indigenous peoples and how they fit into this whole energy conversation. The First Nations of Canada and all of the Indigenous peoples in this country how did you come into that?
Shannon Joseph:Well, you know it's funny because I think I didn't know much about kind of Indigenous issues and treaties and all that kind of jazz until I started working at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, which you know. I'm sure for some of my former colleagues it was like going over to the dark side, but it was when I started working with resource producing companies and you know reality of their work is working with the First Nations and other indigenous communities that are on the land base where they are working that I really started learning about all of these things. You know there has been. We have the Indian Act in Canada.
Shannon Joseph:The Indian Act treats Indigenous people, or First Nations in particular, different from other people. Like I don't know if this is still the case in the Indian Act, but you used to not be able to have a lawyer. You can hire a lawyer if you, if you wanted to become a lawyer yourself, getting that law degree would make you lose your status as a First Nation. So there are, there were a lot of things in the law that were holding people back and are still holding people back, Like even today, because of the Indian Act. What I've heard from from chiefs in different parts of the country is that they have to ask Ottawa permission to spend money that they've earned, like you know, they might have earned selling some resource or developing some product, but it's like, okay, we want to build this on reserve lands, Now I have to ask somebody in Ottawa permission. All of those things are frustrating, but they're also associated with a lot of those communities having high levels of poverty and other issues. And for me, as a person to you know to go back to the start of our conversation who cares a lot about ending poverty and how do we help people live better the fact that you know this is such an acute issue for Indigenous people in Canada really spoke to me and spoke to the things that I thought were really important and were things that I was like. Well, if this is happening in Canada, I can focus on Canada and, you know, forget about trying to solve other countries' problems you know what I mean or getting into that game, because there's a lot of important stuff to do here and it's been incredible to work with those leaders and be supportive and part of things that they have been doing, and I think of people like Stephen Buffalo of the Indian Resource Council and AIOC, and Karen Ogun, who I'd mentioned, from First Nations LNG Alliance, and many, many others Like I can't name them all.
Shannon Joseph:Crystal Smith and you know all of these people have been doing really important things to change the reality on the ground. A reality on the ground. And, in the same way that you know, good projects in municipalities make things better on the ground right away. Indigenous participation in resource projects creates jobs and incomes that change things on the ground right away. And you know Crystal Smith from Haisla talks about this a lot. She did a video with Energy for a Secure Future.
Shannon Joseph:When Haisla got the money because they were involved in LNG Canada and then were in a position to do their own LNG project, which is Cedar LNG they had their own money to preserve their language and recover their language. They had their own money to build the Center for Elders. They had their own money to do things with youth. People in the community were earning money that allowed them to become homeowners, to allow them to travel for the first time all kinds of things that people take for granted.
Shannon Joseph:And so, for me, the reason I'm passionate about the work that I do with the First Nations organizations that I work with and leaders that I work with is that doing these things makes people's lives better right away and, conversely, when projects are suddenly canceled or things just don't happen, you know you don't always see the effect of money not coming or an investment not happening whom that was going to be their job, that was going to be the springboard to diversify the economy of that nation. When the thing doesn't happen, there's like a lasting consequence that is negative, that maybe nobody sees, including the people who are fighting a given project. But boy do the people in that community feel it, and I think that's really important.
Stewart Muir:You made reference to the dark side and shifts in your career.
Shannon Joseph:What was that all about? So when I was in university, I studied civil engineering and I really wanted to do environmental engineering. Like if anybody asked me what I was doing, I was doing environmental engineering. I was the person who was the president of the environmental club at my CGEP. I founded an environment club in my elementary school.
Stewart Muir:A CGEP is a Quebec community college.
Shannon Joseph:I'm sorry rest of Canada. It's an acronym. I don't know what it stands for, but it is this two-year thing that you do between high school and university and, all to say, like I've been very passionate about protecting the environment, it was an important issue for me all throughout my school years and then going into university and then, you know, I spent eight years of my career working at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, a big part of which was that their green municipal fund. So I designed, you know, the criteria for applications for getting grants or loans to do, you know, wastewater treatment and building retrofits and whatever else. And I really thought of that as, whereas other countries are still trying to get people enough water or energy or whatever else, in North America and in Canada, what we're trying to do is have those things but reduce the impact of those things so that we have a cleaner environment. This is kind of how I saw the whole thing and I love that work and I loved all the people I worked with and what I started to experience and I had the privilege of, for a six month period, being the acting executive director of the Nunavut Association of Municipalities. So there are 25 municipalities in Nunavut, which is a settled lands claim and and they're very remote. There are no roads between these communities and it gave me insight into, you know, issues of suicide which were a huge thing for my board members at the time. There would always be somebody in their community and and you know the need for jobs and the need for that because of the need for hope in these places, and you know, a lot of the mayors would be very excited if there was a mine that was going to come into those communities and all of these things because it meant development and, yes, there'd be an environmental impact and, yes, they were going to have a role in how those were dealt with. But, you know, on top of that list was how do we create opportunity and hope and a vision for the future for our communities? And we want these things to happen.
Shannon Joseph:And then I, you know, go to, you know, meetings in Toronto and wherever else and be in meetings where people are like, ok, when we phase out fossil fuels, we really need to move on to getting rid of mining, because this is also bad for the environment. And I was like, whoa, there's a huge disconnect here. And also, if you get rid of mining, you're not going to have a phone anymore. Like what are you talking about? Mining, you're not going to have a phone anymore. Like what are you talking about?
Shannon Joseph:And it just made me start to think that I needed to see for myself what was going on in the resource development world.
Shannon Joseph:And I didn't necessarily want to go work in oil and gas, but basically the opportunity came up and I met with the people at CAP and I'm like I kind of like these people and I decided to go for it, because the fact is we use resources every day, in every aspect of our lives, and we want to have those resources in a way that obviously is produced in a way that you know people are not hurt that the environment has the least impact, but there's going to be an impact, but that impact allows people to live and to live better and to have services that are really important.
Shannon Joseph:And you know, getting back to that question of balance and trade-offs and what are our real choices, for me it is not a real choice for any environmentalist to say, well, we're just going to stop mining, because I think if they thought about it they'd know that's not really possible, and instead it's like, how do we do things in a better way. And having crossed over to the dark side, the side of people digging in the ground and doing stuff, it's like what are they doing to do things in a better way, not just in terms of the environment, but in terms of how they work, for example, with local Indigenous communities and whatever else. And you know how can that be better or whatever else? But what I've learned is they're constantly trying to do things in a better way, not just because it's good for the environment, but it's good for business, it's good for the longevity of what they're trying to do. It's good, it's just a good thing. And in Canada we do have even our business leaders want to do things in a good way.
Stewart Muir:So they're not out there trying to hurt the environment.
Shannon Joseph:That's right, they're not out there. You know it's tooling their thumbs, mr Burns. Yes, it's not Mr Burns. I mean maybe there are some Mr Burns's out there and we all, and that's why we're all hold each other accountable in our work, whether it's the local community or the government or whoever, but I think on the whole, it's not a bunch of Mr Burns out there. And Canadian industry has been at the forefront of developing technologies that not only reduce the impact of resource development here but can be used by other countries to produce their impact, and that is a good thing, and that technology development would not have happened if those industries didn't exist and if those industries weren't making money that they could spend on innovation. And I think that's not something that's really considered enough.
Stewart Muir:I said early on this could be a six-hour podcast. I have to revise that. I think this could be an eight-hour podcast, but we have to wrap things up. So, Shanna Joseph, thanks so much for being on Power Struggle.
Shannon Joseph:Thank you.
