Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - January 21, 2025, Winnipeg, Manitoba THINK TANK COMMENT EDITOR: RUSSELL WANGERSKY 204-697-7269 ● RUSSELL.WANGERSKY@WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM A7 TUESDAY JANUARY 21, 2025 Ideas, Issues, Insights Risky solution to a complex issue A LBERTA Premier Danielle Smith has been widely criticized outside of her province, and widely praised within it, for her stance on how Canada should respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff threats against Canada. The prime minister and 12 of the 13 provin- cial and territorial premiers agree that blocking energy exports to the U.S., or imposing a tariff on energy exports, are powerful options that should be available to form part of Canada’s response if Trump goes ahead with tariffs — a move that appeared to go temporarily on hiatus on Monday. But Smith opposes the idea. She says her government will not agree to any export ban or tariffs being placed on oil and gas shipments to the U.S. She warns that doing so would precipitate a “national unity crisis.” Smith told reporters last week that “First of all, it’s oil and gas… It’s owned by the provinces, principally Alberta, and we won’t stand for that.” She insists that an oil export ban would cripple central Canada because the pipelines travel through the U.S. on their way. “If you cut off that line,” she cautions, “you are cutting off Ontario and Quebec.” She’s wrong on both counts. First, Alberta does not own all the oil and gas within its boundaries. To the contrary, most large oil and gas producers currently operating in Canada are either fully or majority foreign-owned. Less than 30 per cent of Canada’s oil and gas industry is Canadian-owned, and many companies regarded as “Canadian” have significant foreign ownership among their major shareholders. Second, shutting off the oil pipelines to Eastern Canada might create a temporary inconvenience, but it would only result in a significant increase in eastbound oil shipments via rail. It is surprising that Smith is fighting so hard to protect her province’s oil and gas exports to America, yet ignoring the harmful impact that Trump’s tariffs would have on other sectors of the Alberta economy, including mining, forestry and agriculture. What is more surprising, however, that she is relying on weak arguments when she has far more persuasive arguments available to her. She is ignoring the fact that Alberta’s oil and gas revenues make up a critical portion of equalization monies that are paid each year to a number of Canadian provinces. Those dollars are literally keeping the lights on in hospitals and schools across the country. Any measure that cuts off or reduces Alberta’s oil export revenues would have a severe impact on the nation’s health-care and education systems. She could also credibly argue that any tariff imposed by Canada on oil exports will likely re - sult in lower oil revenues, which would once again impact equalization funding. That’s because the type of oil extracted in Alberta — Western Cana- da Select — is currently being sold at a discount of approximately US$14 per barrel compared to the benchmark price for West Texas Intermediate oil, and any export tariff would likely increase that gap. There is every likelihood that an export tariff on Canadian oil would result in the oil market reducing the Western Canada Select per-barrel price in order to offset the higher net cost. If so, American refiners and consumers wouldn’t feel any pain as a result of the export tariff, but Cana- dians sure would. It is estimated that every one-dollar increase in the WCS discount gap will cost the Alberta gov- ernment $600 million in annual revenue, meaning that even a slight increase in the discount due to an export tariff could transform a projected bud- get surplus in Alberta into a deficit. That could also impact equalization calculations. Beyond the equalization argument, Smith could also point to the likelihood that cutting off oil exports to the U.S., would likely result in the Americans suspending their oil exports to East- ern Canada, where they are a critical supplier. Doing so would cause mayhem in Atlantic Canada until another reliable source is found, likely at a higher price. The prospect of turning off the oil export tap and/or slapping a tariff on oil exports to the U.S. may appear to be potential game-changers in the budding Canada-U.S. tariff war, but the issue is far more complex — and far riskier — than many Canadians currently comprehend. In this high-stakes game, that’s something for our nation’s leaders to bear in mind before mak- ing such a consequential decision. Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon. deverynrossletters@gmail.com X: @deverynross Markets, morality and the need to do more THE wildfires which have devastated Los Ange- les of late have been harrowing to watch, and in more ways than one. Of course there is the baseline level of human decency, where it pains us to watch people lose everything. Their homes. Their pets. Their neigh- bourhoods. It was one thing to know these things intellectually by reading the newspaper, but now we watch them flee through flame and smoke via seemingly endless videos online. Even divorced from all political contexts, it weighs heavy on the heart. Then we have the increasingly prevalent voices of those who see such a disaster and cannot help but attach a conspiracy theory to it. Like U.S. con- gresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who asked, “Why don’t they use geo-engineering like cloud seeding to bring rain down on the wildfires?” Lest this seem like a reasonable request, because cloud seeding is a real process that can produce rain in certain conditions, keep in mind that Greene is among those who contended that the government was responsible for producing the severe hurricanes of this past season. This vein of conspiracy-theorism often points to cloud seeding being real as an excuse to then blame the govern- ment for basically any weather event, specifically ones cloud seeding could never produce. For the record, cloud seeding requires al- ready-present clouds to be stimulated into raining, which is not viable for drought stricken California. But aside from ridiculous conspiracy theories and crass political opportunism, there is some- thing more subtle and pernicious that ought to be addressed. There was a recent news story about how in the wake of these fires, some Los Angeles landlords were illegally raising their rents up to 134 per cent. Disaster capitalism is nothing new. Of course there is the more macro-systemic issue one could be talking about when discussing disaster capi- talism, thoroughly deconstructed in the fantastic work of journalist Naomi Klein. But for our purposes, we will focus on the more ground-level form. For example, a person who buys up a large cache of bottled water, knowing that the supply in stores will run out and con- sumers will be forced to purchase that necessary good from their personal supply at an outrageous mark-up. This is the practice these landlords are engaged in. And it was striking the manner in which some people were lining up to defend the practice in the comment section of this story. There were no wild conspiracies necessary. Just a complete outsourcing of one’s own moral judg- ment to the principles of free-market economics. The defenders seemed to find it laughable that the landlords do anything else. What enterprising individual could let such an opportunity pass? An “unexpected demand windfall” for landlords is how one commenter described the destruction of thousands of homes. This slavish devotion to entry-level econom- ic principles falls well within the category of religious fundamentalism, where one need not exercise their own judgment and can spout thought-killing dogma which brokers no room for further discourse. Ironically, many of these libertarian types are the quickest to label those who disagree with them as NPCs, or non-player characters one might find in video games. As if it isn’t they themselves parroting predictable reac- tionary responses to any and all stimuli. Unfortunately, given the current political climate, the U.S. and soon Canada will be under regimes that view things like morality and the environment as “economic externalities.” In other words, things that do not need to be seriously considered in economic assessments. And I fear in the wake of this there will be another such outsourcing of morality. Because liberal democracy can serve as such a crutch, where people convince themselves that because they’ve gone out and voted for the good guy (or against the bad guy) that they’ve done all they can. Our society is geared towards convinc- ing the citizenry that we are primarily consumers of products and services, and occasional political actors who get a semi-consequential vote every few years. Do not let voting be your opiate. It is imperative that we direct more energy into our communities than the occasional casting of a ballot. To roll over simply because we have been outvoted is tacit acceptance of this system which increasingly values offering economic windfalls to the shareholder class at the expense of the working class that the democracy ostensibly ought to serve. We need to educate ourselves in moral philos- ophy and look out for each other, as it becomes ever more clear that we cannot rely on the powers that be for either. Lest we all succumb to this eco- nomic dogma which insists we are all little more than numbers on a spreadsheet. Alex Passey is a Winnipeg author. Private property versus the public good OVER the years I’ve been advocating for urban nature and a healthier greener environment for our city. Sometimes I’ve experienced wins, but many campaigns I’ve participated in have been lost. And as the losses pile up, so does my anger — anger toward elected officials who don’t seem to care and a system that stacks the deck in favour of money, whether doled out by oil and gas lobbyists or developers. I’ve tried to keep my anger in check, but as the months and years of inaction on cli- mate and the environment drag on, the rage builds. So I find myself feeling not unlike George Monbiot, an environmentalist and journalist with The Guardian, who’s been at this game a lot longer than me. Once upon a time, Monbiot’s articles about rewilding Britain and addressing the cli- mate crisis sounded almost optimistic. After decades of global meetings on climate and biodiversity producing little change, he’s be- ginning to sound like a raging voice calling out from what little is left of the wilderness. It’s a similar anger being felt by people from across this city — Indigenous, Métis and non-Indigenous — who have been gathering on the streets adjacent to the Lemay Forest, protesting the destruction of one of Winnipeg’s few remaining intact tree canopies. The fact that protesters are dismissed as NIMBYS and accused by trolls of being “privileged” whiners — read here white and wealthy — trying to protect their little back- yard forest does little to mitigate the anger. What lies beneath that anger is grief — grief at the potential loss of some 19,000 mature trees and a habitat that provides one of the few safe urban homes and corridors for a host of animals, from deer and foxes to owls and migrating birds. Grief for generations of children, many of them too poor to enjoy nature outside the city, being denied the opportunity to experi- ence it within city boundaries. And the protesters are not alone in their grief or in their demands that the tree cutting stop and the land be protected. Their voices have been joined by the Manitoba Métis Federation, Manitoba Wilderness Committee and heritage organizations, including Manitoba Historical Society, Her- itage Winnipeg and the Manitoba Archaeo- logical Society. The latter organizations are outraged that the historically significant Asile Ritchot cemetery, which lies beside and beneath the forest canopy, is being desecrated by tree felling, in contravention of the Provincial Cemeteries Act and the Heritage Resources Act. The cemetery contains the unmarked remains of as many as 2,300 infants and children who died at the nearby Asile Ritchot orphanage and home for unwed mothers, between 1904 and 1948. Yet despite the environmental and histor- ical significance of the Lemay Forest, the city’s zoning department has not suspended the developer’s tree-cutting permit, even to allow for a review of existing laws that would prohibit further tree cutting — al- though they were recently given 30 days to explore acquisition and rezoning the area as parkland. And what of Tochal Development’s To- ronto-based CEO, Mazyar Yahyapour and his Winnipeg-based project manager and spokesperson, John Wintrup? Well, last week Yahyapour refused an of- fer to purchase the Lemay for $5.25 million, almost four times what he paid for the land. Wintrup was then quoted as saying that whether Tochal’s development plans were approved or not approved, the Lemay Forest was coming down. If that sounds like a hollow threat, it isn’t. Wintrup has consulted on two projects — the Parker Lands and old Shriners Hospital site — where trees were clear cut prior to development approval. Those actions are happening under the guise of something called “predevelopment,” a word which is neither defined, nor refer- enced, in the city charter. So why won’t the city expropriate the land to build a park just as they do for roads? Why do the private property rights of some consistently trump what is obviously a pub- lic good — acres of forest that absorb storm water, reduce heat, sequester carbon and sustain urban wildlife? Am I angry? You bet I am. But my anger doesn’t mean much unless all of you are an- gry too. Angry enough to email or call your elected representatives to express not only your outrage, but your love — for Winnipeg, for nature and for all the children who may one day inherit a city where every intact forest has fallen to the developers’ axe. Erna Buffie is an author and filmmaker. Read more at ernabuffie.com. DEVERYN ROSS ALEX PASSEY ERNA BUFFIE TODD KOROL / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Alberta Premier Danielle Smith may be making the wrong arguments over export tariffs on oil. ;