For two reasons, Environment Minister Stephen Guilbeault is badly offside chastising a Canadian company from China..First it was Suncor that he chastised, a highly efficient producer of a fuel that is both legal (and upon which the minister will be depending, for his return from Beijing.).Second, you don’t do that sort of thing. It’s unpatriotic..To the latter point, the activist Minister Guilbeault is hardly alone among his colleagues in his disdain for the country in which he grew up. Whether it’s Finance Minister Freeland pondering aloud whether the capitalist system that built the country is done, or the prime minister himself wondering aloud whether Canada is even a country, we have learned to expect less from the Liberals..If only this mentality still shocked us..Returning to the first point however, Guilbeault was reacting to Suncor’s announcement that in order to focus on its core competency — manufacturing oil — it would dump its wind and solar assets. Given that Guilbeault is all renewables all the time, depressingly so in fact, one might indeed have expected him to react as a cat whose tail had been twisted. However, as the Suncor news is old, one has to ask why the minister chose to utter his criticism from China..Could he not have dealt with it before he left? Or saved it for his return?.In the event, he affected a tone of outraged righteousness; it was, he said, the kind of thing that made him want emission caps..Emission caps? There is already an Alberta emission cap of 100 Megatonnes a year. Put a limit on clean, efficient Canadian oil, as opposed to the other kind we get from places like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iraq? What's the sophisticated policy analysis underpinning that?.The trouble is that the man has no sense of irony. There he was in Beijing, which famously last year permitted two coal-fired generating plants a week, calling out a Canadian company that has committed to reducing emissions by 10Mt, by 2030. Suncor in fact, with five other oil sands producers, is part of the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero Alliance that is committed to achieving net-zero emissions from production by 2050. Fifteen years later than Minister Guilbeault would prefer, but a triumph of technology and Suncor's particular brand of boy-scout good will..So Mr. Guilbeault, don't lecture Suncor. Tell the Chinese..Although, he probably can't tell them much: They had already warned him not to be 'condescending.' (An understandable caution on their part perhaps; Heaven knows, when he comes to Alberta he comes off as a condescending chump.).Anyway, that's one irony..The other is that as Environment Minister, Guilbeault is thoroughly invested in the idea that Ottawa can do what it likes in provincial jurisdictions such as energy because it's all one atmosphere, you see, and as we call carbon dioxide pollution and pollition is federal, we get to call the shots? But he still can't see his way clear to allowing Alberta to gather carbon credits by exporting natural gas to China, so that they can cut back on burning coal... It's not one atmosphere then, it's Canada's mission to show the world it can achieve zero emissions..There is one other irony, admittedly beyond the threshold of ministerial discretion but a bitter pill nonetheless. On Monday, the renewables in which Guilbeault places such faith and which Suncor is busy dumping, let down Alberta. The wind did not blow, the power was not forthcoming and in the midst of a Level 3 power alert, natural gas saved the day. .Poor Mr. Guilbeault. He has become a parody of himself..It is a pity that he has such influence over Alberta's energy policy however.
