Roundup: Uploading their environmental liabilities

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For his Friday presser, prime minister Justin Trudeau was again laden with a myriad of announcements that he needed to unburden himself of. First it was the announcement that 125 medically-trained personnel from the Canadian Forces would be headed to Quebec to assist with their situation in long-term care facilities, with more assistance to come from the Canadian Red Cross and the banks of volunteers assembled by Health Canada and within the province itself. From there, it was that the government would spend $1.72 billion to remediate orphan wells in Alberta, BC and Saskatchewan, and more money for oil companies – particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador – to deal with their methane emissions. And then, it was money to help artists, athletes, and entrepreneurs. And finally, it was remarking that it was the anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And if you’ve caught your breath, during the Q&A, there was discussion about Parliament meeting in person one a week (the Conservatives want four times a week), that Finance Canada is looking at some kind of financial aid for provinces who can’t get access to cheap credit.

During the ministerial briefing afterward, there it was made clearer that there was going to be more money for regional development agencies so that they can help out local companies when they have difficulty getting commercial loans to bridge them through this period. Navdeep Bains said that they are still looking into technological solutions for contact tracing (and the Privacy Commissioner has issued guidelines if that is the case). Oh, and Canada Day is going to be virtual (which saves them from having to deal with not having access to Parliament Hill anyway because of construction).

But back to the energy sector. I find myself annoyed that the federal government has opted to go the route of paying billions of dollars to remediate these orphan wells because it means the sector – and the province itself, who set the deficient regulations that allowed the situation to spiral out of control – have successfully managed to upload those environmental liabilities to federal taxpayers. And I get that Trudeau has a political incentive to both be seen to be helping Alberta, and to patting himself on the back that this is an environmental measure, but it’s deeply frustrating because it’s only a little over a year ago when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that companies, and in particular trustees in bankruptcy, can’t just offload these liabilities to the government to salvage the assets. (This, as the sector says that the measures aren’t good enough because it’s not targeted to their liquidity issues, and their boosters keep calling for a freeze to carbon pricing and environmental regulations, because of course they are.)

The province has made a lot of money by punting its environmental liabilities to the future. They didn’t properly ensure that these wells had securitized their remediation, because making companies pay upfront would hurt investment. And in the oilsands, they just trusted that the tailings ponds would act like regular mining tailings, and when they didn’t, they kept expanding and hoping that someone in the future would figure the problem out, and now they’ve got a giant problem on their hands, but hey, they needed to ensure the money flowed fast and immediately, which they then didn’t properly tax or charge sufficient royalties on, and now that the bill has come due, they’ve successfully ducked it and made sure the federal government pay it for them – all while shouting that they’ve paid for everyone else all this time so now we owe them (not true, and not how equalization works). Add to that, you have people like Elizabeth May saying that she opposed oil and gas subsidies but supports this kind of orphan well remediation in spite of the fact that it’s a giant subsidy, I can barely even. I’m an Albertan – I get that the sector is hurting, and yes, it’s hurt my own family, but I also get that it’s now a structural problem and that the boom days are never coming back because nobody has a time machine and can go back to stop the development of shale oil. Demanding the federal government bail them out – particularly after the province chose to put themselves in their current fiscal situation by refusing to properly tax their own wealthy and ensure a reasonable consumption tax because they instead chose to spend their oil resource revenues – just feels a bit rich.

Good reads:

  • With curves starting to flatten in some provinces, there are warnings not to start re-opening the economy too quickly lest the hard work be undone.
  • As of Monday, all airline passengers in Canada will have to wear non-medical masks.
  • The federal government ordered five million pills of hydroxychloroquine – which Trump touts as a cure for COVID-19 – for people with autoimmune diseases.
  • Government reports indicate that India’s intelligence agencies may have been targeting Canada, and in particular some elected officials.
  • The NCC has been doing $8.6 million in needed renovations to Harrington Lake without giving any public notice about it, so yay proactive disclosure.
  • Kevin Carmichael looks to a potash company as an example of how companies are adapting to the current pandemic, and how they can look forward to the recovery.
  • Susan Delacourt marks the 38th anniversary of the Charter with how some of our freedoms are being curtailed in these pandemic times.
  • Delacourt also notices that the premiers have been uniting against the influence of Trump, for what that’s worth.
  • Chantal Hébert calls out the tone-deafness of Andrew Scheer’s responses to the current situation, and how that will leave a lasting impression on his successor.
  • My weekend column looks at how the Conservatives keep demanding accountability but devolve into conspiracy theories and dime-storm Trumpism.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Uploading their environmental liabilities”

  1. thanks for calling out Alberta on its dismal record of remediation of old wells. Politics being what it is, Trudeau has no choice but to give an all day sucker to a province that vilifies him in order to garner some give back, whether that be optics or a tamping of the separation lingo thrown around in that now oil poor boondock.

  2. “And I get that Trudeau has a political incentive to be seen to be helping Alberta…”

    It really must be awkward for him to mark Charter day and do what he can to “help Alberta” without acknowledging the ghost in the room whose presence looms large over both issues. On one hand, there was that kind of subtle “thanks dad” tweet he sent out with a picture of PET and QE2 at the moment the fountain pen broke. But he took care not to self-congratulate too much in that he didn’t mention dad’s name.

    On the other hand, nothing he does to “help Alberta” will ever be good enough because of the poison myths that generations have been told about the NEP, and the supposed “sins of the father” that Trudeau fils feels he has to perpetually apologize for. There was nothing wrong with the NEP. Norway did a version of it and their citizens are millionaires. Alberta threw a tantrum and, well… the rest is history.

    Personally, I think papa would be proud. Not just of how his son has been shadow-boxing with Kenney, but especially how he’s wrangling with Trump, who continues to run roughshod over the American constitution — paradoxically in the name of “rights and freedoms.” One wonders what the Trudeau family patriarch would say about the orange elephant in the bed. None of it pleasant, and probably some of it unprintable.

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