David Detomasi: Oil as a Political Instrument, Energy Poverty & Canada's Superpower Question

Is Canada ready to tell a clearer story about why its energy matters to the world?

In this episode of Power Struggle, Stewart Muir is joined by Dr. David Detomasi, Professor of International Business at Queen's Smith School of Business and author of Profits and Power: Navigating the Politics and Geopolitics of Oil, to examine why energy is never just a commodity—and why Canada keeps falling short of its own ambitions.

From classroom hostility toward fossil fuels to the geopolitical weight of LNG, pipelines, and critical minerals, Detomasi explains why the country has the ingredients to be an energy superpower but has yet to build the narrative—or the infrastructure—to become one.

They discuss:

• Why oil is a political instrument, not just a commodity
• The reality of global energy poverty and why two billion people still lack reliable power
• What it actually means to be an "energy superpower," and why the term has eluded Canada for 20 years
• The trade-offs of energy transition and the false either/or of carbon vs. renewables
• How Canadian LNG and natural gas can influence emissions in China, India, and Southeast Asia
• Trans Mountain, Bill C-69, and the lessons of getting big projects built
• Shifting public opinion, polling cycles, and the need for durable reasons to build
• What young people misunderstand about how the energy system actually works

This is a conversation about energy, narrative, and national purpose at a moment when Canada's global role is being rewritten in real time.

At a time when allies are scrambling for secure supply and the post-war trade order is fraying, Canada's resource wealth has rarely mattered more—or been more underused.

The question is no longer whether Canada has the ingredients to be an energy superpower, but whether it can finally explain why it should be one.

#PowerStruggle #Podcast #DavidDetomasi #EnergyPolicy #CanadianEnergy #EnergySuperpower #Geopolitics #LNG #OilAndGas #EnergyPoverty #ProfitsAndPower #QueensUniversity #EnergySecurity

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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Transcript

Why Oil Becomes Political

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Dr. David Dito Masi has spent his career studying the most politically consequential business in human history, and he has an uncomfortable question he keeps asking. Two billion people in the world live in energy poverty. Canada sits on some of the largest reserves on the planet. Its allies are scrambling for secure supply, and it's not clear that there's a coherent story about why any of that matters. David is a professor of international business at Queen's University Smith School of Business. He's the author of Profits and Power, Navigating the Politics and Geopolitics of Oil, and one of the clearer voices anywhere that I know on what energy actually is a political instrument, not just a commodity. I've been looking forward to hosting David here, and that day has arrived. David, welcome to Power Struggle. Great to be here. Thanks for that introduction. You know, oil is not just a commodity, but it's a political instrument. For your book, profits, power into this. Take us how you through us through where this idea came from.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

What observations are you making? Sure. Well, I mean, I guess I was kind of born into it. Um I uh grew up born in in Calgary, Alberta, lived my life in Cochrane, Alberta. Um, this is the late 60s, 70s, and early 80s, and you know, of course, oil and gas was everywhere, and it was in the lifeblood of what was happening around me, you know. And I just assumed, of course, that this was what everyone else was experiencing. And then I went east when I did my P my uh graduate education at Queen's University and then end up being employed there. I realized that this was not what most people thought about oil and gas. They didn't have direct experience with it. And over the past decade, I started to notice a real trend in the classes I was teaching, which was viewing oil and gas development, which was always part and parcel of the courses I've taught what it was and why it mattered, as something that people were actively hostile against before they even met me. I started up my book with this argument. People are yelling at me on the very first day about why are we studying this and this is bad. So I tried to figure out why that social phenomenon was happening, why people are turning this commodity into something that was much, much bigger on their own personal psyche. And they were almost uniformly opposed to it. And since then, I've been kind of using energy as kind of a center to talk about things related to our political developments or geopolitical developments, and our and indeed our our social development in Canada, what we think is important and why. So that's the lens by which I see a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

So you're a transplanted Albertan who went to eastern Canada or Central Canada to Central Europe. Central, as as you say in central Canada, Eastern, as of course the Westerners. Three times. Maritime. Oh, you're really the Eastern. Um, but you've made your career there, and you are at Queens, which is famous for its engineering school and business school. It educates a lot of civil servants. It's known as being, in contrast to maybe some of the other universities on the scene, as a kind of pragmatic, real-world place where you find out what's going on. Is that a fair assessment of your setting, or has it gone like a lot of other universities have?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Well, I mean, everyone sees the lens through their own experience. I would say a couple of things. One is um, in addition to Canadian students, uh, the Smith School of Business put a lot of emphasis on recruiting international students to come in. Um, so we teach students from all over the world. That's becoming a little harder now with the visa stuff and not being able to accrue as many. But um I would simply say that the pro energy story I've been telling has been getting harder to tell without significant, at least questioning among various parts of the faculty and students about why this is. Um, okay. I'd be happy, I'm happy to make that case, but I do sense a bit of hardening, not just in Queens, but in other places as well, at least over the past decade. A real angst about and fear of and opposition to discussing energy in a in a more balanced kind of way that I was doing. So that that is a fair assessment, at least for my eyes.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Now, are you alluding to environmental climate concerns, or are there other issues that seem to have you know pulled it into one way or the other?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Well, primarily, um increasingly, at least in the time period I was talking about, the act of producing energy was viewed almost entirely through the calculus of what it did to environmental concerns and more clearly, you know, what was concerning me about global warming. I mean, there was a very simple logic that has been being played out that was very powerful in people's minds. Uh, net hit to limit to 2.0 by 2050, by reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which means less fossil fuels. It was it was a four-link chain. And that was it. Like that's and that was enough. And people didn't view things be much beyond that. And you know, and the environment meant carbon dioxide emissions as opposed to a number of other things. And of course, um, increasingly, although I would say it's less, but still mattered, was its impact on our indigenous communities and whether or not they were getting a fair shake or a fair treatment in the development of these things. But almost all the opposition that I saw had been based on this perception that more oil and gas meant damage to the environment that had to be stopped.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

So Profits and Power, your book came out a couple of years ago. What was the reception?

unknown 6:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

Well, I think it was necessary, laid the groundwork. It was designed to try, you know, basically, I would argue you can think whatever you want about energy and oil and gas, but it has to come from a factual basis. You have to know what where it came from, and then you can decide. Um, so the book was written primarily with that in mind. It was more of an educational text. And I think it was eye-opening to people that went through it, but most of the time, you know, it's you know, I filtered it through platforms like this and classroom and all these sorts of things to try to give people a condensed version who may or may not um read the whole thing. But what I also saw is I couldn't stop there. This was a global book. Uh, the next obvious step in the project I'm doing right now, of course, is writing what does this mean for Canada? And that's the project I'm working on right now. And hopefully that'll that'll continue the national debate here about what all this global stuff means for us as Canadians.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Well, you reference global. Here we are April 2026, as we sit here. Yep. Tariffs are coming or going. Yeah. The Strait of Hormuz, who knows what that will be like by next Tuesday. Uh the free trade uh upbringing that a lot of us had over decades of where the world was headed suddenly doesn't look that way anymore. We have uh recognition, a majority of Canadians think that having more East to West or West to East pipelines for oil, for natural gas is a good thing. That's showing up in all kinds of different public opinion polls. In British Columbia, we've got that same trend showing up. People are connecting the dots. Um, there's there's a realization that energy transition and net zero and passing parliamentary legislation that says declares that we will be at net zero. I'm not sure what that means because I've tried to find it, but it's a little vague. Um, you've got these things that for years for the last decade have been um

Campus Hostility And The Climate Lens

SPEAKER_00 8:30

the the direction of the world, apparently. Suddenly it's no longer that way. Is it going to take us a while to really understand what's happening? Are there more big changes to come before it settles down? Uh, and where are we headed? Are we headed towards net zero or something else?

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Well, uh, there's a lot of that question. So let me back up a little bit. Um, I do think Canadians and generally in the world got used to the idea of free trade. Um now, the big concern I have is how much is the rupture, as Mr. Zar Prime Minister has talked about, due to fundamental forces in how the world works, or how much of it is due to one particularly aggressive U.S. president and who eventually his time will end. And will we go back to some sort of state complacency that we had before? And oh my god, it's all changed. Now, a couple things about that international order that Mr. Cardi uh talked about, it was quasi-rules-based, but it was never free of power politics in things that really mattered. I mean, and and if it could be shattered by just the appearance of one aggressive U.S. president, then there probably wasn't that much there to begin with. I don't think it actually was showered. I think there's a significant number of people that would like to refabricate that order, rebuild it, perhaps Mr. Trump's cause. Um because it did fundamentally work. Mr. Cardi's trade strategy to go out to India and go out to Indonesia and find other places that we can work with kind of reflects that. You mentioned polls. Uh, I worry, you know, polls five three years ago said we shouldn't build pipelines because of its impact on the climate and always we're trying to move away. And now they all of a sudden they do. And are they going to switch back in in three years? I mean, the Canadian public opinion in anything is pretty fickle, as it is just human nature. So you have to have four, that's a good thing to have. It allows you to do things, but you have to have fundamental reasons why we need to build pipelines, build more energy infrastructure beyond simply the fact that the polls say we can do it now. And I think there are real reasons uh that go beyond that, um, have to be able to stick longer than a polling cycle.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

David, you've written that Canada needs a compelling narrative to become an energy superpower, a phrase we hear about a lot today. What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_01 11:13

Many things. Um that phrase, energy superpower, has been around for at least 20 years and probably longer in the Canadian political context. And always wondered why we'd never quite achieved it. Um, I think the main reason is people take a lot of convincing to know what it actually would be if when we achieve it and why we should do it in the first place. One of the things I argue is you know, the term superpower derives from the Cold War, and when we were starting to ramp against what was then the Soviet Union, and that took a lot of ramping up. It took a little decade before people could realize the challenges that they faced and would be required to face them and meet them head over for a long period of time. I think the same sort of thing is happening here. Um, right now, I think people's narrative is we just need to produce more energy, sell more energy, and that will make Alberta richer. But what does that do for us? And and how does this fit into broader geopolitical and political objectives? I think Mr. Kearney, Prime Minister Kearney, is trying to communicate that, but it's a long sell. Um, it's going to take a while before people really realize what that means.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

People in the world live in energy poverty. Are scrambling for energy. Here we are sitting on some of the largest reserves in the world. We have the best technologies, workforce, all the conditions. Yet we're not already a superpower. Isn't that weird?

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Well, we're not bad. Okay. Um that let's take stock here. We we are the fourth biggest producer of oil in the world, the fifth biggest producer of natural gas. Pretty impressive technologies in emerging nuclear. Um you know, we have hydropower expertise. So we're we have we have the ingredients. So it's not as you know, some countries simply don't have the ingredients and never will. So what has gotten in our way? Um, well, a couple of things. One is, you know, clearly, this was not the agenda of the Trudeau government um to build energy and to see it in any other way other than through an environmental lens. Um we have had long-standing relationships with allies and in Asia, primarily Japan. And one of the things I'm researching right now, I think, is important for people to realize is people don't view energy the same way. We are lucky in Canada than having so much of it. Most people in the world don't. And they have to worry about getting it, particularly in a place like Japan, that's an island. Or they've followed some policies that perhaps weren't the wisest. In the German case, the weeding off away from natural gas and reliance on Russian energy. So we never had to have this comprehensive view of the world. And so we could view energy in isolation and choose whether or not to develop it based primarily in the Trudeau era on its environmental or perceived environment. We're not phrased in these broader other areas. And the final thing I'll say you know, this this I we tend to forget that only about a quarter of the world has reliable access to energy when and where they want it, about two billion of the world's AIDS. About four or four point five billion have it intermittently, you know, have it reasonably, but nowhere near the amount or they still worry about it. And then there's about a quarter of the world that really lives in energy poverty. Um, you know, there's countries in Africa, which we could talk about, I don't give the names because it's a bit bit tough, but um, who use their entire country uses about the same amount of electricity as California uses to heat its hot tubs. Right. This is the degree of energy discrepancy we're seeing here. And and so I think we we we think that everyone has what we have, and therefore the primary problem is cutting back on it and not providing it. And that's just not the reality of the rest of the world. So I think we sometimes lose that in our in our vision.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

And we need a bit more of it. Now, a lot of what happens in the energy business isn't necessarily what you'd expect if you're basing your knowledge, your analysis uh on what's in the headlines. There's such complexity in energy regular energy investment, in the sheer amount of energy we use in the world. You are intimately familiar with all of these things. It's what you teach. What do you think Canadians need to know? And anyone anywhere in the world who's watching this or listening uh needs to know to get to grips with the fundamentals of what you talked about.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Well, there's there's three or four main principles. I I think people fundamentally underestimate its size and criticalness to everything that we do. Um, you know, people take it for granted that the light will come on when they turn on the switch, or there's going to be gas in the station, and or any other number of things that they've come to rely on

Trade Ruptures And Pipeline Whiplash

SPEAKER_01 16:30

without really knowing how they got it or how it got there. So, and the the size, the enormous reliance, big chunks of the world's population has, governments have, on selling it in terms of their fundamental budgets. Um the need for trade-offs, uh, I think we've sold people a fairly simple belief that we can easily transition away from a carbon-based area to one based on renewables. We can do it quickly, we can do it relatively painlessly. And why haven't we done it yet? And I I don't think people fully realize the reality that how long that will take. And they also I I don't like this narrative of either or us them win-lose. You know, hey, we built a pipeline, yay, the carbon side won. Oh, we built a battery plant, oh, yay, you know, the renewables people are happy. It's it's like we're pitting um all these things against each other in a zero-sum domestic game. When the reality, we take a look at the the amount of energy we're going to need, we're gonna need everything we can possibly get from any source uh for as long as we can see, globally speaking, because the world's demand for energy is going to go nowhere but up. And so I think we should think more holistically, balancing about trade-offs, and stop working about us them either or and talk more a little bit about all of it.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Now, we can't forget about the environment. What is happening in the reality of how energy is being provided to humanity that is encouraging in that domain? Or do you see anything that's encouraging?

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Well, I mean, uh it's uh it's not as if people have in this ambition we have with energy superpower, people all of a sudden forget. I mean, if you go into any investment bank or big oil company in Calgary, the first thing you see in their lobby is paintings, very nice paintings, of landscapes and things. And it's not as simple as, well, we can clean up the Canadian environment, therefore we're doing well, we can stop. Uh what really matters for an energy superpower, and this is critical, is how you can influence someone else's behavior by how your behavior works. And those someone else's are the massive emerging market economies that simply dwarf anything Canada will ever do. This is China, this is India, this is Malaysia, hundreds of millions of people making decisions. What we can make them do, or at least induce them to do, is make progressively cleaner decisions themselves, A by making them richer, which means they'll pay more for the environment as people, as their incomes rise, they do. B, switching from coal to natural gas and other sources for electricity, which is the best environmental thing they can do in the short term. Um, and C emphasizing the reliability of Canadian energy so they can plan farther ahead into their future for their own economic gain and not have to be worrying about scrambling for energy every time something shooks, shakes. That planning horizon is really helpful to build longer-term strategies for economic development.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

We're at a remarkable moment right now, something unfolding in real time. We have a liberal prime minister who, as has been widely noted over the last year, has been sounding like maybe a conservative prime minister might sound, not very much like the predecessor in his party, who was famously uh environmental climate focused in his agenda. But we haven't yet seen, and this is what some critics are saying, uh, the the evidence that behind the words of Mark Carney are the actions that will convince everyone that you know he is he is uh serious uh about this. So I I think over the next while it almost seems inevitable that there's a bit of performant pressure on the prime minister and his natural resources minister and his whole cabinet and team to navigate through. If these things were easy, they would already have happened. And you know, that's a rule pretty much of life anywhere, no less so here. Um, what do you think the things are that will make it hard for the prime minister? And let's give him the benefit of the doubt that he is truly sincere in what he's talking about and really wants to get that done. What do you think he has to navigate to get to the other end of this so that whether we're actually an energy superpower or something that is transformed in a beneficial way for Canadians?

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Well, there's the standard political problems that he faces. One is is the progressive wing of his own party. Um you know, the liberal tent is very big and has been stretched, and I've argued in other places that they moved the tent pegs, like literally, like, and okay, that's great, you can stretch it, but it's not as if the people, you know. I would argue that a big chunk of the anti oil and gas environmental movement of the Liberal Party was politically performative. That's what the leader wanted, and then they marched along. But there's 20 or 30 percent, probably, who really who are true believers, who probably really want to stop and Foreign Minister Gibbos. Probably the most prominent one, but he's not the only one. So he's going to have internal challenges within his own party eventually. Now they're quiet now because they know that the reason that they have their seat probably is due to him and his own personal popularity. But if things go on too long and the government stumbles left for, you know, those the knives will come out as they sometimes will do. And the other political challenge is a very impatient Alberta, who has heard this before. Um, you know, a big chunk of them are at least pushing for separation. I don't think that's a wise thing to do, but I can understand why people would push on it, who are suspicious of him largely from the book, his book Values, and what he wrote in it, which was quite opposite what he's arguing now. And you know, you know, does he really mean it? Now, I think that over the past year, what we've mainly seen is his work has been designed to get himself a majority, and now he's got one. So I would argue the next six months are pretty critical in terms of we've got MOUs, we've been talking to people, but have we got something going? And I think ultimately what's going to have to really, he's going. I think he'll put in a corner where he's going to have to simply say, for example, we are going to build another pipeline. Candace Net, and we're going to do it, regardless of X, Y, or Z reasons not to. It's going to take that level of political leadership.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

We'll see if he doesn't was a book published by a McGill professor who I would put on the eco-left, as it were, side of the spectrum, a political scientist, who actually suggested that it will take government ownership of the next oil pipeline for that oil pipeline to get built. Do you think that's realistic?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Well, I mean, I have to take a look at the financials of every pipeline. The professor isn't necessarily wrong, though. Um, the amount of money it's going to cost, because we have a tough topography and it's expensive, and our companies are not that big by global standards. And the ones that are big enough by global standards, we could work within a partnership or others, have been burned in the past by putting a lot of effort into thinking about building a pipeline here, there, and having projects canceled two, three years into it. Patronus is a classic example, some others. And so they're suspicious of Canada. Our own domestic companies are probably a bit suspicious and can't take the risk on. So that level of political leadership I mentioned in the answer to the last question probably means that there is going to be a backstop of Canadian risk money guarantees somewhere, somehow. Right? And that's the risk for the prime minister. A lot of people don't want to spend public money on something like that. But that's if you take a look at the risk profile to build these big projects, asking a simple company to step up and do it by themselves is an awfully big ass given our history. They their shareholders probably wouldn't want them to do it. So they're gonna need some are not stepping up right now. Well, they yeah, I mean, they're not stepping up publicly. I would like to hope that in the back rooms, you know, Mr. Hodges having lots of meetings, and they'll say, for us to step up, we're gonna need to see X, Y, and Z in order. And now I would assume those conversations are happening, and then you know, once they're in place, a company can set up a say we'll do it. Um, but to suddenly be based on a memorandum of understanding and it that we're gonna spend hundreds billions of dollars. And and another thing that people are gonna have to think about, and it's important in our capital markets, is I think our Canadian shareholders like their dividends, they're like their oil and gas companies to have a steady increase in you know production, you know, but if you got two billion dollars in free cash flow, we'd like a big chunk of that back in dividends. We don't want you to go spend it all on building a bunch of new production capacity. You know, we kind of like this. Um so to induce a Canadian oil and gas company to massively

Energy Superpower Meets Energy Poverty

SPEAKER_01 26:30

increase their production capacity, you know, they're gonna have to convince shareholders and you're gonna have to get get aggressed to places. So it's not that easy a thing to do, put it that way. They need so yeah, I think there's gonna have to be some room for government help somewhere. And uh I hope those conversations are happening.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

Um, in your work, you often look into the deeper historical learnings of things, and uh, so often in human human history, uh, the thing that people thought was driving what was going on in their lives turns out later, as more information arrives, with the benefit of hindsight, it was it was quite different. And one thing you've talked about in your work is the effect of price on uh who produced oil, who got rich. Uh, what are some of the levers that you're starting to understand now because of your scholarly work that weren't necessarily known at the time?

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Well, one of the things that I think is well, a couple of price is still there. And, you know, if you take a look, for example, at Canadian oil and gas companies, what I've looked at recently, even with all the tumult in the world of demand for new energy, they're not massively expanding their production capacities. I mean, they're pretty careful people. Um, and they want to have predict predictability in the price environment. They they and they want the history of oil in particular is all about try people trying to get to a cartel or control of supply to keep price pretty moderate level if they can do it. So they don't have these big swings and they can just keep going. So price is still there. One thing I think is nice about the debate that's important is it's no longer about worrying about absolute supply. The world's got lots of oil and gas, um, at least for the you know, for several decades, if not longer. Now that could be good or bad, depending on if you want to transition away. Sometimes people argue if we had less of it, we'd be moved quickly to use something else. But there isn't this narrative of we're running out. The real problem is a constriction in a piece of infrastructure bottleneck, in this case, the street of horror moves, which was incredibly predictable to everybody but Donald Trump. What do you think they're gonna do? Um but the amount of interest in the various plactors, we can talk about this if you want, to reopen that street is pretty powerful. So it will get reopened, but the knock-on effects over time, I think, are pretty serious. I mean, I think that's something people should think about now, not only in managing this crisis, but in who controls the narrative of the lessons learned from this crisis? You know, you know, the Strait of Arloo's got blocked and Trump did this. So we are going to do X or Y. I mean, I I think there's going to be a real battle out there in lots of places, controlling or trying to stake the claim about how we should best interpret what that crisis ultimately means.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

David, for half a century more, the Arabs, Saudi Arabia, the other Arab states with all that oil they're sitting on, they have prospered. They have created an understanding in the world that they are rich beyond the capability of the human imagination to understand. And that this will probably persist into the future. Now, one must ask whether it is as durable. Certainly the oil is in the ground, that's not changing. But the complications of this new situation, um, maybe it will be solved soon, but maybe it won't. And if it isn't changed, or even if it is what does it mean for Canada? What does it mean for uh countries that have got uh similar resources but have been underperforming? Is this a moment that there will be a realization of what uh uh stability, energy security, proximity, some of these values, uh uh rule of law in the societies that we book with, even recognition of environmental progress as an absolute must. I mean, if there's a benefit from from the the uh the the Western European and and Canadian approach to energy, it's been this belief that human effort can improve the outcomes in terms of emissions and environmental impact. And if you think that's true, surely we would want more energy from these places, Norway, Canada being prime examples.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah, this is a really good point you're making. A lot of people forever have said, you know, oh yes, we we much we value ethically produced energy, and we want our oil and gas companies to consider the environment. We want them to be able to be stable and reliable. But you know what? We're not gonna pay a dime more for their oil than we will for anybody else's. It's they won't pay for it. You know, I mean, and they will, you know, that as you've moved, this is interesting, during globalization and other places, as you gradually loosened the reins of energy and it became to operate much more like a regular spot market and everything else, then the primary driver of everything was price. And who where you could get the cheapest energy. And a lot of this scared really bothered Russia a lot because it was supplying Western Europe through pipelines and with fixed price contracts, which often more above what perhaps could have been gotten on the global market through a spot market. You know, they were you know, you're paying more for energy, and what would happen when Europe could get enough ships that they didn't have to do that? That was the one example where people were paying for security supply. There's a premium attached to it, but they were willing to tolerate it until Russia decided to invade Ukraine. I would like to think, and this gets back to what questions and conversations might be happening with oil and gas company executives and government bureaucrats right now. I would argue that Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, East Asia generally will pay something for reliability now that they probably wouldn't have before. That it would it matters to them to have a you know a reliable supply of perhaps Canadian energy that's going to come no matter what. And they might even be willing to pay a premium for it. They might even put up some money to help us build it. You know, it's something that's an idea that I've floated around a little bit. Look, you know, you maybe the Japanese will help pay for some of this stuff in return for a very secure supply of energy. Now, I would assume someone else in the in the bureaucracy of Canada has thought of that idea. It's not that hard. We'll call this split moral piece for Canadian resources. Yeah, I mean we are reliable, we're stable, um, we have we produce it in environmentally clear ways, um, our regular regulatory frameworks. And, you know, no, I think who will I think the reliability is something foreigners is a need to have for them. The fact that it's ethically produced is a nice to have. Um, it may matter, but the reliability, you know, when when people, and this is a real concern, people, most of the effects in East Asia, they're worried about not being able to grow enough rice to feed their people. People are on rations, people are not being able to move like it's a real thing for them. Um uh energy security. So that will come first.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Yeah. Now, now, David, years back, uh a similar phrase but a different one, uh, ethical oil, it it came along. It had a lot of thinking that uh when you know I think about the moral case for Canadian oil, I I certainly uh find that very appealing. But at the same time, I'm thinking back to uh what followed when one brave soul uh went out on this idea of ethical oil and really was just pilloried for it. Uh is there something that Canadians don't want to be recognized for in this?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Well, a couple of, I mean, that's I think you're talking about Ezra Levant's book, The Ethical Oil. And you know, he's he's he has a few. He's he's fairly you know clear what he thinks. Um and fine, you know, we need that level of debate. And there's others who are just as powerfully stringent on the other side of the argument. One of the things I think um is happening in Canada that I think I worry about. One is, and this is an historical problem. We the only thing we ever want seem to be wanting to be world leaders in is hockey. You know, we we want to be the best and know to be the best, but in everything else, it it seems that that level of commitment to wanting to be there, yeah. And where can we realistically in the economic realm be really good? And I think a lot of Canadian governments over the past 20 years have said, well, let's do social media, let's do high-tech, let's do quantum. Okay, but you're you're gonna have a hell of a time trying to be stronger than those folks in the states whose

The Real Trade-Offs In Transition

SPEAKER_01 36:30

venture capital is a hundred times ours, and you know. So the idea that you could be good at natural resources and that it mattered, I think, was not talked about as much as it kind of should have been. And the final thing I'll say in answer to that question is I also think there's a lot of people who question not only oil, but I'm writing this about in my book, but question free market capitalism in its entirety as a tool for enhancing welfare, um, which it's done remarkably well, but it appears like it's led to huge inequities, young people can't get moving. There's a broader questioning of the entire economic system based on that, that has much broader implications beyond just oil and gas. It's oil and gas is just part of it. And that debate is also being pretty significant in in this in this is anti, if that's the term, on the way up. It seems to be. Uh I mean, there's certainly an you know, I I spent some time even in a business class, explaining why open markets, why they work. Now, one of the you know, this is a fairly standard political challenge or political debate or differences is progressivism views governments as a tool to enact positive social change. And I think a lot of young people, which is historically normal, want to be part of that. They want to see change happen, they want to be an instrument of it. And then an old fogey like me or whatever comes along and says, Well, you know, we have these processes at conservatives that have worked for a long time, shouldn't mess with them. Um, is is a tough, tough kind of sell. But um but they do work, yeah. And yeah, they have problems, but so does everything else that you the other ones are worse. But we also have to, I think getting back to broader, yeah. We could talk about this, I suppose, a little bit. Broader fundamentals of what it is to be Canadian, you know, open markets are something we kind of value. The symbolisms, economic growth is an important thing, you know, nation-building economic projects, something we haven't done since CD How or the end of the Second World War. I mean, we may need to revise some of that.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

David, we've got 10 provinces in Canadian Confederation, but when you ask the question, what's the one province that is most likely to have an impact, positive or negative, on the progress towards uh greater influence as a country, energy superpower? Surely it's British Columbia. Maybe Quebec could be close second, but for sure, because of the Pacific and Asia. Yeah. What makes British Columbia complex to you? Difficult to understand, and what is the key to explaining it to others, particularly in international finance?

SPEAKER_01 39:48

Well, I gotta be a little careful here. I haven't spent huge volumes of time in BC. And what I've seen or and you know, what I do is interpret it through the lens of media and reading and talking to people, but I don't have an intuitive feel for it the way I might for some other places in the country. But my my guess is at least my time I've spent in Vancouver at Victoria, there was probably the bigger, bigger urban centers. It's a pretty idyllic place. You know, the weather's great, we can warm, and we we're clean, and and we can and and we we like that, and we don't want to do anything to to upset that. And you know, I I think it's uh we're pretty lucky that the rest of the world doesn't live that way, and the only way you can help other rest of the world, Canada, one one of the main ways to help them become move in a direction I would argue British Columbians would prefer to see is they have to have energy security first. Then they can you know it it's sort of this we can we can get to a clean future like we live here without going through these necessary steps of economic growth and arrested and these sorts of things. So it it's a bit of a it's it's easier to be on the progressive side, I suppose, when other things have taken care of. But I do notice that BC seems to have a problem with debt, like it's you know, and the conservatives almost won. And I'm not arguing you know political parties, but it's it's not as if there's this debate is happening there as well. I mean, that's that's the best I can do for BC. I don't I really not sure I'd want to go too much farther than that.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

And when you put BC beside Alberta, where you have a raging sovereignty referendum debate going on across the Rockies on the other side, eastward. Um and in British Columbia, you have uh, as uh one famous newspaper columnist said many years ago, uh land, uh Lotus Land, the the naval mazing denizens of this uh beautiful place. I'm sitting here in Vancouver. Um this connect uh the the disconnect between these two realities uh because on paper they're pretty similar, these two provinces. You know, their attitudes are similar. Um the economic uh basis is not that different, uh yet culturally uh so far apart. Do you think this could be reconciled for ultimately uh a successful outcome?

SPEAKER_01 42:47

Well, yeah, I mean, it kind of reconcile, but you can you can certainly come to a mutual agreement of interests because it probably isn't as far apart. I mean, classic stereotype is Alberta's Texas North and independent and total government out of the way. We want to and BC is much more, you know, we're happy with regulations. I'm not sure that the stereotypes are are never as accurate as as they are popular. One of the interesting things I think BC sees is you know what, you've got a pretty big gap natural gas play in the Monday part of the BC up there. Um you can make a lot of money doing this if you're doing it right. And you know, money allows you to do a lot of things that you want to do. You know, you want to have good health care, you want to have good education, you want to have good social systems. You know, they gotta be paid for. And you've got to, you know, it's not as if it's only Alberta now that has natural gas resources. Others, others do as well, and can see that their own economic future could benefit from it. And it can be done in a responsible way. We've proven that. You know, with it with Kitemat, BC, and uh LNG, like we we can do this. So I I it's interesting the power of the environmental opposition seems to maximize during the construction phase, but once something gets built and the money starts flowing, all of a sudden the the opposition seems to go right away. It's the transmum, the second it opened its pipes, no one's talking. The opposite goes away. Yeah. I think the opposition is to get it built, and once it gets built, um the economic environments will flow. I I think people who are these are the ones who are quite uh adamant against net fossil fuels as a basis of energy, their their moment of power is is in the conception stage and the and not a not when it's actually done. They they try to stop it long before.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

One thing I wanted to touch on was the promise of Quebec. Yeah, I have uh testified at the House of Commons Natural Resources Committee. So is so is a colleague of mine, and uh there's a block, Cable Plois MP there, who I think he raised the same thing with both of us. The question, because uh you'll commonly hear, certainly from Alberta, that uh because of the equalization formulas,

Pipelines, Risk Money, And Political Will

SPEAKER_00 45:30

there's all this money that goes from Alberta earned from selling oil to the world that flows to the have not provinces, as we used to say. I don't know if that's that term is around anymore, but uh Quebec gets a significant amount of uh funding from that formula. But the response from the Bloc Québécois is no, no, you don't understand. It's the other way around. And I I try to figure out what he is talking about because he he seems quite fervent in this belief, even though the numbers on paper tell you clearly that Alberta sends more money to Quebec and other provinces, certain other provinces, than goes the other way. And what he was referring to, I believe, was the specter from a decade or two ago of Dutch disease. And in fact, it's Quebec, he argued that suffers because its manufacturing product is uh made less competitive, it sells for less internationally when you have an inflated petrodollar. Now, um, as I understand it, those conditions may have applied at one point in time, but don't anymore. Uh, could you help me to understand? Does equalization uh flow to the benefit of Quebec, or does Quebec get uh uh shafted by uh Dutch disease in Canada today and comes out on the wrong side of that transaction? Who's right?

SPEAKER_01 46:54

Well, I mean, that that's a pretty good contortion of that particular individual to figure out um that somehow Quebec is subsidizing Alberta because of that. I did I've never seen a legitimate study that a believable one that argues, yeah, you know, now and also one of the things we've noticed about the Canadian dollar is it isn't a petrocurrency anymore. If it were, it would be hovering around 90, 95 percent of the Americans right now, and it's and it isn't. And even as I even as our there's lots of reasons for that, but as oil prices have gone up, they haven't translated. In fact, this Quebec manufacturing is actually benefiting from a very low Canadian dollar right now, if if that was what was really a concern. And I'm not really certain that I would want Canadian manufacturing to base their competitive you know outlook on, oh gee, we've got a low dollar, so it's easier to do. I'd rather they did better things.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

It's a hollow critique and out of date. There is some truth in it. I also noticed that one of the tribunes of the environmental movement based in Vancouver recently had uh nationally circulated uh op-ed also using the term petrodollar, that uh Canada actually not petrodollar, but petrostate, a similar uh word, I would say. Um Canada is becoming a petrostate because, in her view, lobbyists from the oil and gas industry were getting too many meetings with government and uh being too influential for for her liking. And therefore uh we were becoming a petrostate. And I think the the uh usage of the term was meant to be, you know, in a sort of sinister sense, as uh, you know, you don't want to be going down that road. But if you look at the facts, uh Canada is is is not close to being a petrostate if you look at the actual definition of that.

SPEAKER_01 49:01

Well, no, we're I mean it the very fact that some oil and gas executives finally, after a decade, can get a minister or prime minister to return their coals. I mean, that particular individual says forgot that for 10 years, couldn't, if you were a business leader, you couldn't get a meeting with Justin Trudeau. You know, Bill Morneau talked about that. I mean, he had no interest in talking to the business sector. So I would argue that perhaps we're just getting a resumption of some fairness in what politicians are actually hearing. And if we're if we're a petro state, there's a lot of folks in Alberta that didn't get the memo. They're not seeing somehow that you know that their lives are all of a sudden dominating the national conversation. Um so I would argue that if you're taking as evidence any meeting between those who are poor energy and the federal officials as being somehow indicated for a petrostate, you're awfully you're stretching the definition of a petrostate far too far too far. And it's not as if this is the only people Mr. Carney is is meeting. You know, it gets back to this idea of equalization that we had in the last question. Well, is equalization a good and necessary thing to begin with? And it probably is, because economic fortunes of provinces rise and fall. Um and if the environmental movement was right and we were moving away from oil and gas, then eventually Alberta would be the one needing energy, you know, support, need support. Um and it goes to the federal government that end risk redistributes it according to its internal whims. It's not as if Alberta writes a check to the government of Quebec. But um, you know, the the the money flows are easily tracked. And in I to are to argue that somehow the Canadian energy sector is dominating what Mr. You know, it may dominate the headlines. Okay, it had a few meetings. I I I think any evidence of that is is pretty much of a stretch.

SPEAKER_00 51:15

David, it's almost time to wrap things up, but I want to take you through around here. One sentence answers. LNG Canada, a game changer and and LNG as a sector for the country, or is it too little too late?

SPEAKER_01 51:31

Oh, it's we're late to the game. Um, but I still think there's plenty of room if we move quickly, that can eat LNG. Because it's a good there is a good business case for it. Right? A shorter trip time to Asia, it's easier to condense, we have good harbors, all those things mean we can move it back and forth quicker.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

So hey, Trans Mountain Pipeline, money well spent, or a cautionary tale we shouldn't repeat.

SPEAKER_01 51:58

Well, the cautionary part is it's overspending. It is, it is, we needed to build it, needed to do it. But yeah. Um, it's cautionary, and hopefully we've learned some lessons that'll make the mix pipeline a little bit cheaper.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

Okay. If you could make just one energy policy change in Canada tomorrow, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 52:18

One energy policy change. Well to think about, I would I'd probably want to get rid of LC69. I I don't really see why having ongoing fights between the provincial and federal government is serving anybody's interests. Um, when you know I would probably there's another thing, a bunch of things we could talk about there. But if it's not convoluted, get rid of it and do something that's clear.

SPEAKER_00 52:49

Finish this sentence. In 20 years, the world's most important energy source, as in type, will be people.

SPEAKER_01 52:59

You know, I mean, we're already a little, you know, energy is about serving the needs, enhancing the lives of people who think so that they can flourish and give energy back, is I think what you're saying. Yeah, I think so. This is it's a commodity, it serves people, it's not meant to serve its own, it's not its own monster.

SPEAKER_00 53:20

What's the best book on energy that isn't yours?

SPEAKER_01 53:23

I think about Daniel Jurgen. You know, he's written several, and he always some synopsis. Interesting, he doesn't talk about Canada much. We wait. It's like we're somehow part not part of the global energy game, but his books talk a lot about the quest, the prize, it's 800 pages long. Um, you know, and you know, he's written lots of the new maps, so there's good places to start.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

David, where can people find your work if they wanted to tackle the book or papers you've done? Uh what would you advise?

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Well, the book is published by um UMT Press, and one could easily find it there on Amazon. You know, it's uh got a couple of reviews, it's going, it's it's it's available. Look for the new one, but it's gonna take about a year or two to get it out, but hopefully it'll it'll add some more to the debate. A new book? Do you want to tell us a quick word about that? Forging an energy superpower. The book is going to talk a little bit, look at okay, why should Canada be what is an energy superpower? Why should Canada be it? What does it need to do to become it? And uh because I think we need to wrap this debate

Lightning Round And How To Follow

SPEAKER_01 54:30

around something larger that just make more energy. It has to be there has to be clear reasons why.

SPEAKER_00 54:36

Well, look, um, that's all we have time for today. I hope there'll be another chance. Dr. David Dumasi, Professor of International Business at Queen's Smith School of Business. David, thank you for a genuinely substantive conversation today.

SPEAKER_01 54:51

Well, I hope you enjoy it. I hope your listeners and readers and viewers of the podcast find it as well. Happy to have further on conversations.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

Yeah, I think uh this will be something we should come back to. Um, David, uh, a word about you as we close out. You've spent years arguing that Canada cannot become what it keeps saying it wants to be. You've got a new book coming about the energy superpower goal. And whether you agree, viewer, listener, with what you've heard from David or not, that's a conversation this country definitely needs to be having right now. And you've heard from one of the few people in this country who's making the argument with both academic rigor and strategic clarity. And we've heard that firsthand here. His book, I'll tell you one more time, Profits and Power Navigating the Politics and Geopolitics of Oil, excellent read. I recommend it. It's from the University of Toronto Press. And you can find more of his work at his website, drtomasse.com. David, I know, is a passionate teacher involved in some of the most interesting academic projects uh that I've become aware of at Queens. Uh, someone to follow through that for sure. Um, if today's conversation gave you a new way of thinking about what it means to be an energy superpower, sure, with someone who needs to hear it. And please subscribe to Pod uh and please subscribe to Power Struggle on YouTube where you might be watching it or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the other streamers where you might be listening to it. And thank you for listening. Stay curious, stay engaged, and we'll see you next time on Power Struggle. Thank you.