When Prime Minister Trudeau says there’s no business case for selling Alberta gas to Germany, it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no business case..It’s not, after all, as if Canada’s prime minister is a sought-after economist: He famously once declared that budgets balanced themselves. Not many economists agree with that..More recently, he said he didn’t care to think about monetary policy. It was as though his efforts to be the anti-Harper extended to claiming ignorance in areas where his predecessor had an impregnable advantage: No point in competing if you can’t win..And so, it is best left to people who do energy for a living — we still have them in Alberta — to determine whether there is in fact a viable business case for flogging natural gas to shivering Germans..Right now, there may be a very good one. They’re being urged to stockpile firewood, for heaven’s sake. Listening to German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz, one gets the sense they would pay anything, in used non-sequential twenties if necessary, to make sure nobody freezes to death.. Herr Scholtz said on 23rd August 2022, “As Germany is moving away from Russian energy at warp speed, Canada is our partner of choice… For now, this means increasing our LNG imports. We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this.".In diplomatic language, that’s begging..But, Mr. Trudeau wasn’t inclined to oblige. One may suppose it’s his pristine dedication to reducing carbon emissions. Or, one can look deeply into a dark mirror and imagine how much he is enjoying sticking it to Alberta, one more time..Whatever is driving him, the fact remains that while war in eastern Europe has exposed the German folly of ever relying upon Russian gas, now our German allies need our help. A cold north German winter requires more than putting on a pullover.. So when Herr Scholtz asked Mr. Trudeau for Canadian gas, and Mr. Trudeau gave him a photo-op of the two of them signing a deal for Canada to sell hydrogen in 2025 from a plant that has not been approved, never mind built, it wasn’t really just a matter of saying ‘no.’. It was an insult. When Mr. Scholtz — a fellow social democrat by the way, which makes him something of a Trudeau soul-mate —came pleading for Canadian help to deal with a serious German problem, Mr. Trudeau sent him away with nothing. Let the German people starve in the dark, so to speak.. That said, if there really isn’t a business case for shipping Alberta gas to Germany, as Prime Minister Trudeau pompously asserted on Monday, it is because his government systematically destroyed it as soon as it came to power in 2015.. No Canadian government has done more harm to the western energy industry than Mr. Trudeau’s. Since his government took power in 2015, Mr. Trudeau has outright cancelled the Northern Gateway pipeline. He then used regulations to rag Trans Canada’s high-capacity Energy East pipeline proposal out of existence..It was intentional, ideological and designed to be irreversible. And judging from the evident disdain for Alberta that Mr. Trudeau has so often expressed, he must have had few regrets at dashing the hopes of Albertan Canadians.. Our NATO allies are already wondering whether they can count on Canada in a conflict. Now they have less reason to count on this country, even to be a good neighbour.. Damn shame.
