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
Canada's Energy Future: Are We Blowing It?
Is Canada quietly sabotaging its own prosperity?
In this powerful new episode of Power Struggle, UBC lecturer and policy expert Adam Pankratz returns to the studio with Stewart Muir for a no-nonsense conversation about Canada's energy, economy, and future. From the ballooning costs of the Trans Mountain pipeline to the unintended consequences of government overreach, this episode breaks down the real reasons investors are fleeing and what that means for your job, your home, and your standard of living.
We dig into:
- Why a $5B pipeline ended up costing over $30B
- How government failures in Indigenous consultation stalled critical projects
- Why no one wants to build pipelines in Canada anymore
- Whether EVs are really the clean solution we’ve been sold
- The growing fear over private property rights in B.C.
- And what happens to young Canadians if we keep missing the economic moment
Clear-eyed, courageous, and sometimes uncomfortable, this episode is essential viewing for anyone who cares about Canada’s future.
Don’t miss this conversation with one of the most compelling voices on Canadian policy today.
The energy conversation is polarizing. But the reality is multidimensional. Get the full story with host Stewart Muir.
Reach out to us with thoughts, questions, or ideas at info@powerstruggle.ca
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We're making advances in technology. And if we we do figure out how to get there in the decades to come, great. Because everyone else is pushing ahead with just getting their hands on as much energy as they possibly can. And we have a chance to generate it for ourselves and sell it to those who want it.
SPEAKER_00:Welcome to Power Struggle. I'm your host, Stuart Muir. It's great to be back for another episode in season two. My guest today is a return guest to Power Struggle. His name is Adam Pancratz. He's a prof lecturer at the University of British Columbia's Solder School of Business. We love to talk about energy and politics here, and that's what we're going to be doing today. So thanks for joining us. So, Adam, what are you teaching this year at UBC?
SPEAKER_01:I've got a couple courses. One is sort of business and corporate strategy, and then the other one is a course that's called Environment, Society, and Government, and that looks at uh, you know, things that are a little bit outside maybe of private business specifically, but that uh affect private business and then the what the government does and how they act. And uh you know, try to understand how we could evaluate whether a government policy is a good one or not based on a number of different factors, economic, moral, ethical, and so on. Um and then, you know, how would a business react to that? And uh and how do these things affect society more broadly? That's an interesting course that uh it's one of those courses I think you could probably teach off the front page of the newspaper if you really wanted to. Um But uh I certainly enjoy teaching both of them.
SPEAKER_00:And what students are are you getting? What are they bringing to this? What uh are they needing to find out and uh questioning?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Well, I think um, you know, like a lot of students or young people, they they're not not many of them are particularly uh interested or involved in politics. There are a few which are, but it's uh, you know, like like so many students, you get to university, you're focused on your one area, you you you're not you're trying to get through midterms and papers and everything else that goes with that. And it's a ton of work, and you don't necessarily have time to really look around. And there's enough distractions that uh you're not following, you know, Canadian energy policy necessarily very closely. And uh so we try to bring that into the classroom and explain why it's important to them among not just energy policy, but lots of different things.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell And this is at the School of Business, so they're looking for a career in that. Aaron Powell In in business, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um any uh case studies that you've been uh bringing to your class?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Well, I mean, like I say, you can uh you can teach uh it from the front page of the newspaper if you wanted to. One that comes up uh and I talk about it a lot because I'm rather familiar with it, is the Trans Mountain Pipeline. And just um I use that as a you know, pipeline I think is a somewhat you know easy, tangible thing to understand. It goes from one place to another and moves a product, and then you sell that product. Okay. Um, so you can you can understand where the revenue and the payback would come from, but you also understand that it's it is complicated and that there are environmental factors and assessments that need to happen, and then maybe communities are against it. And then there's also different political philosophies, obviously, people who are very supportive of the energy industry, people who aren't. And all of these elements show up in the Trans Mountain pipeline. And I think it's uh it's a really good one to highlight because both because it's obviously incredibly important for the Canadian economy, but why something like that then wouldn't happen? Well, the reason is because you have a regulatory quagmire and mess, which results in um unbelievable cost overruns, right? When we think that the project initially was in the$5 to$8 billion range. And with the government taking over it, now we're projecting, or it was going to cost completion, you know, more than$30 billion. So you've got a six-fold increase in the price. There's no private business that could ever tolerate that and tolerate those figures. And I think that one is quite revealing for students when they realize the impact that poor government regulation, or more specifically, lack of certainty can have on a business to the point that it had to be national and taken over by the government in order to see the light of day, which thankfully it did, but we almost didn't get there.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. The evidence is coming in that this pipeline is creating a lot of benefits for Canada. We're starting to see that there's just no question, right?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Ross Powell There isn't anymore. I mean, uh in August it was announced that uh it's generated uh this year$12.6 billion of new revenues for the oil sands. And um, you know, we won't know the numbers till the end of the year what it will end up being. But so far in the neighborhood of$1.25 billion of royalties to government uh thus far. And you know, you have to think about that that's direct royalties. Um but those companies pay taxes on the revenue that they get. They have their workers pay taxes on their jobs, there's jobs created in the communities. Um, the the effect of being able to have that much more oil and that much more activity, or that activity in the in the oil sands and getting a better price for the product that they're selling has massive implications on the Canadian economy. And uh, you know, if we're thinking that uh the oil sands are more or less producing four million barrels a day, um, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline was able to uh is able to get you know close to a million barrels to market um to get fair market value for that product, uh that's a huge deal. And uh and it's it's it's it's clearly demonstrating its economic worth already.
SPEAKER_00:Right. So when this$7 billion project came into permitting, what you've said was being said then. It was being predicted by the proponents, these are the benefits, this is what will happen. And that's what's happened. But in between then and now, there was this protracted period that led to the cost escalation. It led to a disruption in almost the social fabric of Canada, you know, protest movements and neighbors being pitted against neighbors, and um and then at the end of the day, the things that were true then are still true now. It just cost us five times as much to get it done.
SPEAKER_01:Um basically that's the story. Yeah. Now there there were some uh mistakes made along the way, um, although I would note not really by the company so much. Uh, the the Trans Mountain Pipeline um the legal problems were not with the what the company did. The the company uh behaved very well. It was more the government um screwed up its job, mainly in regards to indigenous consultation. And that was what the court found. It wasn't that you know the the the the company had done anything necessarily wrong, whether or not you agree with the pipeline, that's a whole different um a whole different uh kettle of fish. But it was that the government um had not been consulting rather the uh the indigenous people along the pipeline in in good faith, as the the court redeemed at the time. So that is what caused a lot of these delays and legal battles, um, aside from the fact that um there were um very coordinated environmental movements in the lower mainland which um tried to push back against that. But at the end of the day, you know, the company did its job. And um and because of this regulatory uncertainty and frankly changing goalposts, we've had this, you know, at least or close to 10-year delay on what is clearly proving to be a very economically valuable asset for Canada.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, not just for the sake of being the Monday morning quarterback, but I think it's it's consequential for future projects, what we learn from this. So in the classroom, what are you arguing are the things that need to be done better in future to learn from that and put it to good effect for uh the future?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell So one thing that I've been looking at, and and I've written about it um several times uh recently, uh, is the need for regulatory certainty and clarity, right? This is such a huge issue. And what we've what we've got with Bill C5 in Ottawa and then Bill uh 15 here in BC is governments trumpeting the fact that, well, they're gonna fast track these projects. And I don't want to rain on those parades too much because you know, for you know 10 years now, maybe not quite, but close to 10 years, I've been trying to say that we've got to get these things done faster, right? TMX, you can't have these delays. You can't have that delay for a business that just simply doesn't work. So, you know, on the one hand, I'm sort of happy that yes, there finally maybe is a fast track and there's a recognition of the importance to large resource projects and large resource infrastructure. However, those bills themselves are a massive indictment of Canada's regulatory process. Because essentially what the government said there is the regulatory process is so screwed up and so bad, we can't fix it. So we have to create a separate bill, or bills in federal and provincial. We have to create separate bills which allow us to cherry-pick the projects that we want to go through and then ram them through and override existing regulations. Okay, maybe in an emergency, that might be something that had to be done, but that's not a long-term solution. And that is a huge indictment of everything that those governments have done up to this point. Um, aside from the fact that if you have cabinet cherry-picking projects, it doesn't take a political wizard to realize that that is open to corruption and questionable decisions and decisions being made not because they are ultimately the best projects which ought to go through, but which are projects that for some political reason, undefined and does not need to be defined, the government thinks should be rammed through. So, you know, I remain hopeful, I try to remain hopeful in this space, um, that the correct and projects will ultimately see the light of day. But these bills are not, in my view, something to be celebrated. They are necessary reactions to a regulatory process that has gotten so bad, um, the only way to fix it was by saying, well, we're going to ignore it.
SPEAKER_00:So on this project list, there's going to be a range of the easiest to get permitted and get built to the hardest. Do you think that they will be prioritized in in that order? So the easiest ones to do will get done first, politically easiest and easy in other ways? And leaving hard-to-do ones that maybe are very beneficial for the bottom of the list?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, governments love easy things. So uh probably that that would not surprise me. Um, if the British Columbia project list is any indication of what other governments will do, yes. Uh you know, the government uh list that they came out with in British Columbia um said they're going to fast track projects which were not in had been following the regulatory process and had been waiting for ministers in some cases to sign off on mining permits for the past four, four years, five years, sometimes more. And the only reason they weren't advancing was because the minister wouldn't put their signature um to those projects. So the like SK Creek, I think, was one of those examples up in the Golden Triangle in British Columbia. So uh is the is the government, you know, they're they're trumpeting these projects the public's maybe not aware about, but it's not the government that's made these projects go through. They've persevered in the face of extreme regulatory uncertainty and a poor investment climate and have, you know, made it uh, you know, despite the government rather than thanks to them. And so, you know, will the end process be a bit quicker and uh easier on them? I hope so. I certainly hope so for their sake and for the economies. Um, in the broader picture, you know, we've recently learned that there is no pipeline in the federal government's uh major projects uh planned that they want to fast track or prioritize. Um very likely because pipelines are hard. It's not that there aren't lots of good potential pipelines out there. Um, but uh you know, the government keeps saying that um, well, there hasn't been the the excuse has been the recent reveal that there hasn't been a private proponent to do it. Um well that might be true, but the government's not telling you the whole story. The reason there's not a private proponent is because the private proponent, the pipeline company, still does not have, in their view, the regulatory certainty to proceed with a massive investment which will take years to build. And so the government is saying, well, no one's come forward to make the business case. Um, and we well, that's that is government obfuscation at its finest, right? We create a system that is not profitable for private companies, and so no private companies come forward, and then we say, well, no private companies came forward, so we can't build it. Okay, but we know where the problem is, and it's with the government regulation and the government indications that this will be a long-term thing, that yes, we want to push these projects forward.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And the element there that I haven't been able to figure out, okay, you've got pretty much all of the major CEOs from the big oil and gas companies and medium, small size ones, saying the same thing, which is there are some conditions that investors are telling us will make Canada investable again. And these are conditions that only the government can provide. And there's a couple of them in particular, the emissions cap, which has been uh introduced as an idea, but it hasn't yet been put into place. And then the other thing is the tanker ban, which was the uh restriction in in in northwest British Columbia and coastal shipping of liquid uh petroleum products. So those are probably the two most salient ones. So if the government is saying, well, we we asked for pipeline projects and no one came forward, that's because these companies are interested. Meanwhile, some of those companies are saying, we're actually interested, but we can't do it in Canada, so we're gonna go do it in other countries like the US. Um, how convincing is that excuse that there's there's no one who wants to build in Canada when you've got these obvious uh moves that the feds should make according to industry?
SPEAKER_01:It's nonsense. Um the and and Mark Kearney knows this, right? Mark Kearney's a smart guy, he's a business-minded guy. He worked with Goldman Sachs, I'm quite confident, uh, before he was in the in the Bank of Canada. Um, he knows this. He knows how the world works. He knows how the world works. He knows that money is fungible, he knows that money can go anywhere in the world. And and he also knows, um, must know, that there's no way that private companies look at Canada with the fourth largest reserves of oil in the entire world. And the, again, I think it's third or fourth top top five in natural gas. Um, massive, massive potential, right? Huge. And a democratic, you know, a friendly, what ought to be a friendly country that, you know, the rule of law prevails. There's no, you know, there's not arbitrary decisions that are made or sh shouldn't be. Um there's no way a private company looks at at a situation like that and says, no, we have no interest. Of course they have an interest. But regardless of the potential opportunity, if the restrictions and the regulations put in place make it unprofitable, they're not going to do that. These companies are profit-driven and they can decide to go anywhere else, and notably the United States. I mean, the LNG export terminals always boggles my mind. You know, in the time that Canada's built one, the United States has built nine, um, and they're sending it to Europe. And uh Exxon is just, again, just recently announced that they believe they can supply 75% of Europe's uh energy needs via oil and gas or just natural gas to get them off of Russian gas. Um it's gonna come from somewhere and this energy and and the investment is gonna go somewhere. The question we need to ask ourselves as Canadians is: well, do we want those tens of billions, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars coming into our country or not? These are not small potato numbers. I mean, you look at LNG Canada, right? That was a$40 billion investment. Um we thankfully got Cedar LNG and Silisms going forward, um, which will also be enormous investments, but there's many more, right? And and not just in the energy space, also in in mining, um, which are providing critical minerals uh for the world. Um, you know, you look at the metal markets right now, they're unbelievably profitable for companies and and for miners who were able or have producing mines at the moment. Thankfully we have a few, but we could have way more. And um, you know, this money, uh, if it doesn't come to Canada, it's not just gonna sit in a bank account so Scrooge McDuck can swim in it. It's going to go to the United States, it's gonna go to Australia, it's gonna go to the Gulf, right, for natural gas. European, a few years ago, Germany signed a 30, 30, 35-year off-take agreement with Qatari natural gas. Uh, you don't think they'd rather get it from Canada? Of course they would, but they need energy, right? And this is, I think, what more and more countries, and and I think it's particularly um apparent with the European Union, who were some of the hardest drivers of moving towards you know, full green greening and moving away from fossil fuels. Um, they've now realized, okay, that's gonna take a long time. Something, you know, we've both been saying for years, finally someone's listening, which is good. But, you know, that that's gonna take decades. And in the meantime, we just need energy, right? And so the world has moved, I think, from a recognition that, okay, we're gonna want more and more green energy, and that's a good thing. But really, what we just need is more energy, period. We need more energy. It looks like LNG is gonna be a big, big part of that, right? That's the marginal molecule now that you can export and move. Electricity, you can't move, right? LNG you can move. And is it a renewable resource? No, but it's cleaner than oil and it's better than coal. And so that looks like where we're going for a decent amount of time. And you bring that back to, well, we got a lot of LNG in Canada. We got to get it out, though. And that's gonna be very important for our economic development.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell You say it's about energy, and there'll be those trying to square that with emissions. You know, does does energy equal emissions? Is is there a kind of exact correlation, you know, or is there that idea that there's a detachment through renewables where we're gonna have all that energy, but not the emissions, and that's that's gonna be the thing that allows the uh standard of living we have to be continued. You know, we heard that for a long time. Is that how it's actually playing out in the real world?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell The emissions question is an interesting one because it gets back to well, which emissions are you measuring, right? Because if you look at an electric car, well, there's no emissions, right? How can this be worse or not significantly better than um than uh than an internal combustion or maybe a gas-powered vehicle of an LNG, some of them are around. Um, how can that not be better? Well, um, for an electric car, you need 10 times as much copper. Okay. Well, the copper doesn't magically descend from the sky. The copper is dug out of the ground. Well, where does the copper come from? And what are the emissions required to produce the significantly larger amounts of metal and materials that are required for um for electric vehicles? And we uh study uh a few years ago in Canada, a couple years ago, I think, uh, that they looked at how many kilometers do you need to drive uh uh an electric vehicle, um, both in terms of like emissions and in terms of cost to the consumer before you're sort of at a breakeven point that the electric car is better because the emissions, an intense level of emissions to produce the metals um required that ends up in the electric vehicle, you know, we should consider those as well. And we're at, we're, you know, you're around 100 to 150,000 kilometers at a that's a break-even point, at which point a uh an electric vehicle then becomes less polluting overall than an internal combustion.
SPEAKER_00:And that's a few years of driving for the average person, that might be five, six, seven. Well, I mean more. If it was me, it would be quite a few more.
SPEAKER_01:If it were me as well, it would be a lot more, right? If if you, depending on your commute, would play into it. But if you live in a city, right, like you know, 100, 150,000 kilometers, um, you're talking, I'm thinking about my car now is more than 10 years old, and I only just got over 150,000 kilometers on it. Now, I'm not necessarily typical of every driver, but the point being is that it's it's not just as easy as saying, well, look, there's no emissions coming out of an electric vehicle. You have to look at um the emissions that from materials production all the way till the end. And um and that's important. Um, you know, are we moving towards a place where electric vehicles are going to get more efficient and the mining of materials can get more efficient and and therefore that exchange will come? And sure, yeah, absolutely. Um, but you know, where does the electricity come from as well is a question. In BC, again, we are very fortunate. We say, well, it's hydro, so there's no emissions, right? We were very fortunate. But, you know, I think of the times that I've been to Shanghai, and there's more electric vehicles on the roads in Shanghai than in Vancouver. They're everywhere. BYD and um all kinds of uh brands that people in North America have probably never heard of. And then I look up in the sky and it's incredibly polluted. Well, because where's all that electricity coming from? It's coming from coal generation. So, yeah, is the vehicle itself uh non-polluting and greener? Yes. But they need energy for it, right? And in China, a lot of that energy comes from coal, which is incredibly uh polluting. So these things are, you know, I think if your listeners can, you know, take one thing away is is just the the complexity of the issue in terms of where is the energy coming from and how does it end up in the uses that they want. It's not as straightforward as just looking at the product. You have to look at the entire value chain and the entire supply chain to understand um, is this going to make emissions truly go up or down?
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell We still see this becoming a moral issue. Recently, there was an MP from Vancouver who's now a minister in the federal government, who, on the issue of an EV debate, electric vehicles, um, basically uh said pretty clearly that he thought anyone who was questioning inevitability of EVs as our transportation future was some sort of miscreance and didn't really provide much evidence for that. One still get away with that argument, like to try to win the day by just saying your your opponent is is morally superior, so we can ignore that debate.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I think in some circles, maybe some, I suppose so. You can say that. Um in the circles that you and I turn in, I think, which are more realistic in terms of what is the what are the actual implications here and what are the time frames. Um no, you can't. The inevitability, maybe. I mean, I and I I've said many times, right? Are are electric vehicles going to become uh uh more important? Are we gonna see more electrification? It certainly seems so. But what nobody ever has a good answer for, and I've yet to see it, uh, whether it was directly to me or whether it's um in in studies, nobody has a good answer for, well, where's the electricity gonna come from? Because as it stands right now, we do not have enough electricity, even just for the electrical vehicle mandates that the government wants. Forget electrifying everything. Um just the electrical vehicle mandates. We do not have enough electricity. Okay, so um this August, finally, again, it's been a good year actually for large infrastructure projects, because Site C, the Site C dam, came online, right? And you're obviously very familiar with it, but for maybe some listeners who aren't, that's BC's you know, new crown jewel of electrical generation, this enormous hydro dam that was created by damming the Peace River and is going to create about 1.1 megawatts of electricity, five, 5,100 megawatt hours that can power 500,000 homes, which is a big deal, right? This is a big, big deal. There's around 2 million homes in in BC. So we're talking like this thing could power a quarter of the homes in British Columbia. So that's a big, big deal. Um so we finally got it done, took decades to build,$16 billion, dammed the Peace River. There's huge opposition to it as well. And this thing, again, took decades. Um, well, if we want to or meet the government's electrical vehicle mandates, we need another one of those at minimum. And if we're going to electrify everything, um, we need two or three more. Well, these projects, again, cost$16 billion. They started talking about them in the mid-1990s. They started building it around 2010. We're now 2025. So this has been, you know, multi-decade project to get this one built. Uh, and we need three, four, maybe more, just for British Columbia. Okay. Uh well, does anyone seriously believe that the government uh is going to be able to get that done? I would maybe like to think that's possible. But I'm not I'm hold I'm not holding my breath, is all I'm saying on that one.
SPEAKER_00:Well, tying back to your comment that all this stuff is about energy, if we're preoccupied with what kind of energy, we might be missing the point. And I just want to dive into one thing that comes from the Site C story. That's electricity, and it's green electricity because it's from hydrogams. Yeah, absolutely. It's great. But in recent years, this bountiful legacy of hydro power in British Columbia is falling short of the needs of the populace. We're now importing something like 20% of the electricity we need from the U.S. And uh didn't escape our notice at ResourceWorks that uh we're uh producing natural gas in British Columbia, we're putting it in pipelines. If we had, say, electrical generation from gas-powered plants in British Columbia, we could we could make our own electricity here. But we've made it illegal to do that, correct? Illegal to produce electricity with natural gas inside BC for the most part. There's some exceptions. But what we're doing is shipping that gas to the United States. They're getting jobs and benefits from turning the gas from BC into electricity, and then they're sending electricity back. Um in terms of the energy picture, does this make sense to you?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I mean, no. This is this just doesn't make sense. Um we, you know, we have the ability to be sufficient if we want it, self-sufficient if we wanted to. Um, but that requires a government mentality change from, again, just clean energy to we just need energy, right? And and societies, we're we're consuming more and more energy. And you know, the the jump that we're going to experience in North America in the next 30 years is gonna be nowhere near as large as the jump uh that you're gonna see in places like India, where you have uh 500 million people who are consuming extremely small amounts of energy. But India is um, I don't say industrialized, but it's modernizing a lot. And and people who are um, you know, families who are cooking on these small little coal stoves, that's moving towards gas, right? And and where is that gas going to come from? Well, um, or where's that energy gonna come from? And that they're they're consuming more and more of it as their lifestyles improve, right? And it's then if you have the type of lifestyle that we have in much of the Western world, that is an incredibly energy-intensive lifestyle. And and um there is not a rich country in the world which does not consume huge amounts of energy, you know, relative to poorer nations. You look at GDP per capita, you can kind of almost track the energy. Uh, you can see the the relationship between energy consumption and uh and the GDP or the the the wealth of the country. We need this stuff. And if we don't get it or we don't have it, our quality of life is going to suffer. And, you know, anytime I see people as being against governments being against the development of this, really what they're arguing for is, in my view, is deindustrialization and an economic hardship for a huge amount of people.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. Now we don't make things in North America, probably the same is true of Europe. We go to Amazon and we order it and it magically arrives, probably made in China. And those industries that made those things used to be here in Canada or in the US. That's the industrialization, right?
SPEAKER_01:That's not so much energy related, I would say, as just arbitraging the massive labor wage gap that existed and it continues to exist.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr. But we we took advantage of that wage gap to send certain activities, industrial activities, to other parts of the world where it was more efficient.
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell It certainly was more efficient. And we were the economic beneficiaries of it. I mean, if you look at uh especially its its most striking, like electronics. If you look at the price of a television from 1980 to today, it costs about 70 percent. Like you could buy today, you can buy uh, you know, an 80-inch TV for the sip for a similar equivalent price as you or you know, a TV in 1980 or 1960 costs$500. Well, now you can buy a$500 TV that's you know 50 or 60 inches, maybe not the biggest ones. Right? Well, that's there's no way that happens except that you're taking advantage of the massive production efficiencies that are gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:So the consumer is buying that TV, but they're also consuming all of the energy that went in to manufacture the TV and its yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Absolutely. We don't really think about that.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I would say generally not. I mean, it's it's also maybe not a normal thing to think about for most consumers. They they don't they don't worry about, they just worry about the price, right? Does this thing work and what what price, what value am I getting out of it? Um, how is it made um is is a secondary concern, I'd say, for more people. Although you know, consumers are, you know, thankfully, I I think we're and you and I both would be in this category. We don't want our our products made in a hugely environmentally damaging way or with horrible labor standards. We don't want that. Um but you know, we we don't most people probably don't think about that on a on a hugely regular basis or as much detail as um, you know, people who follow the energy industry for that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, maybe that winter night comes along and and suddenly there's no power and Netflix is off. So we so the consumer is forced to look at this object at home. But they might also be thinking, as a consumer in a Western country, um I know this is a very energy and therefore emissions-intensive object that I've bought to watch shows on.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what what I say, Stuart, is we we we we I hope, and I don't I don't see that we would, but you know, Great Britain a few years ago in uh in the winter, they had areas where they did not have like people could not heat their homes, or uh the prices of their home heating increased 400 percent. You imagine if that happened in Canada. It's not our energy is is abundant and and cheap, but so hopefully the closest any of us are going to ever get to experiencing like what is it like if North America or the world stops consuming energy? And you look at, well, when did the oil and gas prices go completely in the toilet? That was the start of COVID, right? When we couldn't leave our homes for two weeks. And nobody went anywhere, nobody moved, nobody drove their cars, nobody was flying planes, nobody was driving trucks to the nobody's doing anything. Well, that's not using energy, right? That is that is what it looks like. And if you turn that tap off, uh that's what happened. That's what the world becomes. You can't do anything. Um, now hopefully that's never gonna happen again, right? And none of us want to repeat COVID. But that is, I think, a very informative point. You look at what the market price was. You couldn't sell the thing. The price of oil went one day, went to negative$40 a barrel, and you could people would pay you$40 to take their barrel of oil. You're sleeping. Um, yeah, and fill your swimming pull up. That's a no-consumption situation. And obviously, even that wasn't, you know, there was still some things were going on, but that's that's really what it looks like.
SPEAKER_00:So here in British Columbia, we're we're sitting here in Vancouver. There's a lot going on with the rights to land and also the the rights of indigenous peoples. Um and that is something that comes up, I'm sure, in your classroom. What's the trend and what's going on in this regard?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell Well, the trend seems to be that the government is creating a huge amount of uncertainty with regards to what the rights of uh private property owners are. Um, the the decision in the Cowichan case, um the government neglected to make arguments that would have better protected private property rights of citizens, namely that the Aboriginal title in that specific area had been extinguished. They neglected to make that, and that was a direct directive from the time when David E. B was the attorney general of the province. Um that's surprising, right? That the government is um making decisions uh and on you know, Haideguai recently um you know the Supreme Court uh supported the full Aboriginal title over Haide Guay, meaning the implication there is that uh there is no Crown land on Haidewai anymore. Okay, so this is the government signing away uh public lands of all British Columbians to a First Nations group. And that creates problems for, I think, a lot of reasons. I mean, the private property rights, obviously that has economic consequences for investment and property values and throws all kinds of things up in up in the air. And I think it's also, you know, specifically, we look at like the Haida Gui situation. Well, you have a situation there where the government now, there are people who are non-Haida who live on in that archipelago. Um they cannot vote and join the to become Haida, right? Uh and they are now living in a situation where they don't, you know, the governments have a democratic responsibility to the people of British Columbia. First Nations don't. And that's not a criticism of them. That's just a fact. They they have a responsibility to their band or nation members, but they don't have a larger democratic responsibility to all British Columbians. And that's fine. Um, but it's not fine if they are then in charge of public lands or have control over decisions uh for British Columbians who can never vote and democratically uh, you know, change that. Uh that's a serious problem, a democratic problem, which is the democratic process. If you believe in democracy, that's a serious issue. And so um, you know, this needs to get resolved. I don't think there's anyone, myself included, who um would make the argument that First Nations um don't have legitimate grievances from the past and don't um and we wouldn't want them to be full economic participants and crucial economic participants in like these large infrastructure projects or resource projects or any economic activity that happens in British Columbia. Um but the way to get there is not to, in my view, you know, punish current British Columbians who had nothing to do with the situations and the unfortunate situations which happened in the past. It's to create win-win situations where First Nations are prosperous and uh British Columbians who have done nothing wrong are also a part of that. And I I really question that the way the government's going about this in DC at the moment. And it doesn't seem to me that they have the public's best interest at heart.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell It seems like there are actions you've pointed to, taken or or not taken, you know, by default, that have fed into this. Um and yet often the message isn't as, well, there's nothing we can do about this. It's inevitable, it's unfolding. Do you buy that?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell No. No. Again, I think uh, you know, in in the Cowichan case, the government neglected to make its um strongest argument. Um and you know, these things are complicated. Again, we were talking about do people pay attention to where emissions come from? Well, no, but and who who pays attention to um Supreme Court decisions and and sits through and reads hundreds of pages of legalese to try to figure this out. But that should be a huge scandal. That should be an enormous scandal, that the government was derelict in its duty to protect the public interest and neglected to make its strongest argument to defend that land and to defend um the fee simple land um that was being claimed as part of that package. Okay, that that that's a big issue. And and it but it's very technical and you know, it makes sense. It it's it's very rational ignorance um on the part of uh of the public in general, you know, who spends their time reading those type of issues and then following up. That's uh that takes a lot of effort, right?
SPEAKER_00:And that's what the Cowicha case you mentioned has been in the news recently, but a few years ago, also in British Columbia, the uh Blueberry River First Nation case or Yahoe case uh was also very consequential. At that time, what did the British Columbia government say when the court ruling came down?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, good no, great point, Stuart. Um they said that, well, this is the future, right? We've got a deal now, and uh and this is the way that's gonna go forward, and we've we've avoided the uncertainty and and we've we've made a deal and things are gonna be fine. Well, that deal fell apart. So so you've bypassed the process. You said you've gone straight to First Nations, everything you've claimed. Well, the one example we have of it, not at all true, what you said was going to happen. So I don't know what else is going on, but something else is behind this, and it's it's it's detrimental to all British Columbians. And the protection of private land, obviously, that is incredibly important and will get people's attention. But you know, there's 94% of the province that's crown land, and that land belongs to all British Columbians, and it should be protected. It can't be signed away without the public being aware of what's going on.
SPEAKER_00:So is it fair to say that the average person following the news who maybe owns some fee simple property because their house is located on it that they've bought and have a mortgage, or they'd like to do that in future, um, might feel a little bit uneasy at the moment in British Columbia?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, I don't want to um overstate uh the issue necessarily too. I think if we ended up in a situation where truly all private property in British Columbia um were in question, and then the banks started saying, well, we can't mortgage that. And we haven't heard the banks. No. Do you have a clear? We haven't heard that. Um, I think I think we're a long ways from and and hopefully we never get there. Because if if we did get there, then Stuart, then my my other worry that I've had for years on any social issue like this, which gets to an extreme. So if you have in the news, um, which is factual, that the Aboriginal claim overrides defective and invalid, right? Was it the uh because of the Aboriginal title in that one area in Richmond? If you had that in a larger sense, right? Or people, the public began to get a sense that because of Aboriginal title, you know, my land, my private land that I bought, my house is at risk, um, and your private property is at risk, that is just the fastest way to kill public support for reconciliation, right? And I mean, I I said earlier is I don't think there's anyone in British Columbia who who doesn't think that, you know, First Nations don't deserve to have the prosperity that all other British Columbians have. If you start trying to take or having people feel that their private land is under threat, I think you could turn that around in a hurry. And I think that would be incredibly unfortunate and very sad if we got to that. And I would hate to see that happen. But these things aren't uh the government seems to think this is sort of like a dial that you can precisely calibrate. It's not. It's a pendulum. And if it comes swinging back, um, there could be a very violent backlash against us public support writ large for reconciliation and you know, uh recognition or respect more for you know Aboriginal rights and so on. And that would be that would be terrible. I wouldn't want to see that for a second. But the government is creating the scenario that could unravel that support, I think, very, very quickly if British Columbians begin to get the feeling that their public and the public and more importantly their private land is under threat.
SPEAKER_00:Aaron Powell Is there anything more significant than economic reconciliation in putting to rest forever the idea that there's an us versus them between some groups in Canada, you know, indigenous, non-Indigenous?
SPEAKER_01:Aaron Powell I mean, there may be, but I think uh economic reconciliation, what I follow most closely, is is hugely important, right? Because it's you know there are there are many, there are First Nations that suffer from incredible poverty and 80, 90 percent unemployment, things that um you know, people like me who've grown up in in in in uh cities or you know other towns around uh around uh the province can't possibly fathom, right? 80% unemployment. That's just not a something that really computes in most people's brains. And I think that or the more that First Nations are full participants in the economy, the more and necessarily, you know, you're gonna have more mixing and more involvement with more people uh with Aboriginal. Many people have you know don't have a lot of contact with Aboriginals, I think, uh around First Nations around the province, just not because they're trying to avoid them. They just don't happen to come across them. And the more that that happens, the more there's economic involvement, the the more you talk with one another. And I think I would hope that that would result in better, you know, integration and better, a better recognition of the fact that this is good for the First Nations. But also if the First Nations are benefiting, you know, and we get back to resources here, if they're benefiting from a mine, a pipeline, uh a resource development project, forestry, whatever it is, if they're benefiting from it, um, the province is benefiting from it too. And so is everyone in the province. And if that message can get through that, you know, if you do this right, there's a massive lift of economic activity that can occur, um, and investors are going to view that you have investment certainty, you know, then this is a wonderful opportunity for British Columbia that we'd be crazy not to take advantage of.
SPEAKER_00:So looking ahead, 2026, are you an optimist for these issues to go in a better direction?
SPEAKER_01:I keep trying to be, because I really, I really don't want to, you know, I I I believe against, you know, sometimes I feel against many odds uh recently in the resource space or in develop economic development space in Canada. I sometimes think against all odds or against many odds, I continue to believe in the potential of Canada and the country. But I do. There's a lot of smart people here. We have incredible expertise in oil and gas, in mining. We we have a culture that understands the mining exploration, mining development, resource, oil and gas. We we get this. We we have we have the tools here, um, but we keep finding ways to um trip over ourselves and set up barriers which make it more difficult to develop um projects and create economic activity, which really should be a no-brainer. So I remain cautiously optimistic. But, you know, Stuart, I would say that my optimism is dimmed by the fact that, you know, if um we don't figure this out in the next few years and we don't manage to get it done with the catalyst that we had, which set all this off, which was Donald Trump. Most people have now forgotten about that, him saying he's gonna annex Canada. I never took that seriously, but you know, that's what sort of set this whole thing off. Okay, we gotta try to get away from the United States. If we don't do it now, then what is it gonna take? What is it gonna take to do it? And I think that window is closing. And I think if it doesn't happen in relatively short order, um, it's not gonna happen. And we won't only have missed the global economic boat, we'll have sent a very uh, you know, a very strong signal to any investors that even under serious economic threat, Canada is not willing to take the bold steps necessary to secure the economic prosperity of the citizens. That's my big fear.
SPEAKER_00:And if that fear comes true, what's the scale of loss and what is the permanence of loss if that happens?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think we would enter a period of just slow national deply, right? Where you, I mean, in worst case scenario, you're you're looking at um, you know, young Canadians look looking at the job prospects and saying there aren't any job prospects in Canada. I need to go somewhere else. Um we it's always been the opposite, right? Canada is North America's the land of opportunity. People come here because there are opportunities to grow and and build and become economically prosperous. But if we shut down every economic opportunity we have, that's the risk. I don't I'm again I I don't want to think that that is the future my daughter has in Canada. Um, but you know, it's not it's not entirely off the table at this point, which which is concerning, because for most of my life it that's a that that would that would be an impossible thing to say. Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um I'm sure at UBC you've heard the following before. But but Adam, uh if uh Canada doesn't show climate leadership by reducing its emissions, therefore you know reducing its energy production, then the the world will be a worse place because it will mean faster global warming. And um as a result, we have this uh imperative to withdraw. It doesn't matter what other countries are doing, because we're gonna be the climate leaders and they will follow us.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'd say, I mean, A, that's not true. Like if you export tons of LNG to replace coal generation, electrical generation in Asia, you are reducing global emissions because you're you're not it's not up yet auto-renewable fuel, but uh LNG produces far less emissions than coal. So number one, that's just not true on like a technical level. Otherwise, you know, the then you're you're saying to Canadians, we don't want to maintain your standard a little bit essentially, I think, in in a broader sense, or we're not gonna be realistic about how long it's gonna take. And we've you know, we've developed uh an addiction to energy, but you know, specifically um many types of fossil fuels, and that's not gonna change overnight. That's gonna take decades. So am I supportive of moving towards a fully green economy that has zero emissions? Yeah, absolutely. But I am realistic that that's not gonna happen in the next 10 years. It's probably not gonna happen in the next 20. It could take 30 or 40 years to get there, uh, maybe more. Uh we're making advances in technology. And if we we do figure out how to get there in the decades to come, great. But what do we do in the meantime? Um because everyone else is pushing ahead with just getting your hands on as much energy as they possibly can, and we have a chance to generate it for ourselves and sell it to those who want it. And it'd be crazy not to take advantage of that opportunity.
SPEAKER_00:You're the first guest who's come back a second time. I hope I hope there will be others, and also a third time for you. So thanks for returning uh to PowerStrubble. It's been uh very good conversation. Thank you very much. Always a plan.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks.
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