Canada

Tom Flanagan is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary and a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute.

The British Columbia Legislative Assembly recently gave first reading to Bill 51, the NDP government’s new Environmental Assessment Act. It does not recognize the veto over resource development that many First Nations have been claiming.

Dec 5, 2018 

A delegation of First Nations chiefs from British Columbia descended on Parliament Hill Tuesday with a message for the Senate: If senators allow supertankers through their territory, reconciliation efforts will be sunk.

They’re urging Ottawa to pass Bill C-48, The Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. The government bill received support in the House of Commons in May and is now before the Senate, where it’s running into opposition. 

December 5th 2018

A subsidiary of Calgary-based energy company TransCanada has taken leaders of the Unist'ot'en community to court, accusing the members of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation of blocking access to the area around the Morice River Bridge.

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley has announced her government is imposing cuts to oil production in the province.

The premier announced the news in a live address to the province on Sunday evening. It was a widely expected move to address what the government and its official Opposition say is costing the province hundreds of millions of dollars in losses due to global market prices.

Nov. 26, 2018

Richard Smith argues for an emergency plan to meet the climate emergency and "do what the science demands before it's too late."  This is an abridged version of a paper that will appear in the March 1, 2019 special issue of Real-World Economics Review.[1]

November 29th 2018

Canada’s current climate policies are "very insufficient" and would help increase global temperatures by a catastrophic 5 C by the end of the century, according to a new study that ranks the climate goals of countries around the world.

November 26th 2018

Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is aggressively advancing a false narrative about heavy oil’s deep discount. She presents the problem in two parts, neither of which stand up to scrutiny.

First, Notley purports that the abnormally wide price spread affects every barrel of heavy oil leading to millions of dollars a day in losses to the Canadian economy. And second, that the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion is crucial. Neither of these claims are supported by the facts.

Bitumen prices are low because the province has ignored at least a decade of warnings.

The Alberta government has known for more than a decade that its oilsands policies were setting the stage for today’s price crisis.

Nov 26, 2018