Who’s going to invest in Canada now that the blockades continue and the Teck Frontier mine has been killed?
Are the environmental activists and unelected, unaccountable Indigenous blockaders going to make up the hundreds of billions in lost economic activity they have cost our economy?
Are the rich, lefty, American foundations that fund this activism going to cough up the missing cash?
What are the “green” politicians who warn of “climate emergencies” and insist Canada live up to its Paris accord emission commitments going to do to put to work the tens of thousands of Canadians who have lost or will lose their high-paying jobs in the energy sector?
Politicians like Justin Trudeau insist that for every energy-sector job lost, a wonderful, well-paying job will materialize in their new net-zero economy.
Yet nowhere this employment magic has been promised, has it ever materialized. Once the start-up subsidies from government run out, “green” jobs tend to disappear.
In short, what is the Greta Cult’s alternative to conventional economic development?
The deadly effects of “green” virus are going to spread beyond the oil and gas industry, and beyond Alberta’s economy.
When investors here and in the rest of the world see how feebly Ottawa has handled the blockading of our economy by a few hundred rent-a-mob, fringe players, they are going to decide Canada is not the place to risk their new auto assembly line, grain mill, distribution centre or yogurt plant.
The loss of Teck Resource’s Frontier oilsands project means a loss of 7,000 construction jobs (1,000 outside Alberta) and 2,500 operational jobs (about 600 in other provinces) for the mine’s 40-year lifespan.
Teck Frontier would have meant an additional $12 billion a year of GDP for Canada and upwards of $70 billion in revenues to three levels of government over the next four decades.
“Green” protestors who also demand more money for public education and health care need to ask themselves where are governments going to come up with the $70 billion in government revenues their eco-activism has cost from this one lost project alone?
And the “woke” Canadians who have supported the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs via social media (Whew! Talk about true commitment), need to know that around 9% of all Indigenous income in Canada comes from the energy sector through jobs and contracts with Indigenous businesses.
That’s second only to government cheques.
Not only are you putting that existing income at risk with your tweets and re-posts about the injustice of “settler” courts and the oppression of “colonial” governments, you are also making it less likely that governments will be able to afford their current payments to First Nations, much less the extra billions Indigenous activists demand.
There’s a reason all the elected Indigenous governments (14) around Teck Frontier and all the elected Indigenous governments (20) along the Coastal GasLink pipeline route support these projects. They see them as the best way to improve the lives of their people.
So now that you social-justice warriors and climate crusaders have decided you know better than Indigenous Canadians’ own elected leaders (how very colonial of you), what’s your solution?
Don’t say more tax dollars, because you are also rapidly reducing the capacity of our overall economy to generate the tax dollars you desire.
Oh, I know, your heads are full of propaganda that the “rich” aren’t paying their fair share. But the top 10 per cent of income earners already pay 54% of all income tax. And the top 10% includes people like senior nurses, teachers and mid-level civil servants (not just greedy tycoons and robber barons).
The productive elements of Canadian society have tried. You’ve stopped them. So get down off the barricades and tell us your plan.
