What are ‘nation-building projects’ anyway?

The Canadian Press reports that 38 CEOs of Canadian energy companies signed a letter to Prime Minister Mark Carney, congratulating him for his election win and pitching policy measures like overhauling (read “gutting”) the Impact Assessment Act, scrapping federal emissions caps on oil and gas and repealing industrial carbon pricing.

Carney met with them and thanked them for their communications. (Carney talks partnerships with energy execs, Free Press, June 2). Then, 13 premiers met with the PM to pitch their favourite projects which include pipelines and nuclear plants.

The process sounds more like a high-stakes version of Dragons’ Den, with the feds ready to dole out the public purse, than it does a thoughtful, serious assessment of the very real dangers that Canada faces — not just from the U.S. tariffs and the economy, but also from climate change. Couldn’t the premiers smell the smoke emanating from the infernos blazing across the northern forests as they sat behind closed doors in a Saskatoon hotel room?

Now the PM and cabinet will make decisions about which of these projects make the cut — which ones will be “pre-approved” and fast-tracked. A few hints are leaking out: looks like nuclear will make the short list, along with “decarbonized barrels of oil” — which is shorthand for as yet unproven carbon capture, but which sounds like a perfect oxymoron.

What are the criteria for these decisions? Does anyone know? Will the public get that information? Will Parliament?

Just a week before that, 130 civil society organizations from across the country, representing many thousands of Canadians, also wrote the PM, reminding him that the “nation-building” energy and infrastructure projects that Canada needs will not only create good jobs and build the economy, but also respect Indigenous rights and protect the climate.

Oil and gas development and pipelines will not meet these goals, never mind the threats of Alberta separation. Did Alberta Premier Danielle Smith not get the memo that several oilsands sites were evacuating due to wildfires? Oh, the irony).

Nuclear builds are too slow to address the global warming crisis and nuclear is among the most expensive forms of electricity production. Taxpayer dollars can be invested way more efficiently in actual renewable energy sources (including efficiency and storage) — all available now and ready to be deployed, and regional and national grid interconnections that are so sorely needed.

These are the best investment for energy supply, requiring less capital investment and providing the best return on the dollar in terms of energy production, job creation, and rapid greenhouse gas reduction. And imagine for a moment a remote nuclear plant engulfed in a wildfire. (Thinking here about Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe who promotes “small modular nuclear reactors” for remote communities while acknowledging at the time that his province “cannot manage and handle a single other fire”).

Oil, gas and nuclear projects are more properly “nation destroying” projects. Ask any of the First Nations currently evacuating their homes and territories as climate change creates prime conditions for out-of-control fires.

It’s unlikely the PM will meet with civil society groups (though we did ask). Will he meet with and more importantly, hear the concerns of, First Nations worried that “fast tracking” impact assessments will only run rough-shod over their rights and lands? As Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak put it “We need to talk about these issues collectively… our inherent rights, treaty rights and human rights are at issue…”

Also at issue: our children’s future. How is it that we can be at this point in history where we know without a doubt what the impacts of climate change are — and yet our governments seem prepared to invest and go whole hog into the very same industrial development schemes that created the problem in the first place? If it’s true as the International Energy Agency has stated that countries will be seeking non-fuel-dependent sources of energy and actually winding down fossil fuel infrastructure by 2030, why would Canada spend crucial resources (our money) on exactly these fuel dependent technologies? (For the record, nuclear is dependent on uranium and therefore not renewable). Can you say, “stranded assets”?

Not only are we at risk of betting the farm on unsustainable projects and creating even more economic chaos for the future, by not changing the development paradigm we put at risk the very building blocks and sustainers of life itself — water, air, forests, oceans, the ability to grow food.

We owe it to future generations (as well as ourselves and especially those being drastically impacted by climate change today) to turn this ship around. The energy CEOs might not agree, but that’s what our premiers should be calling for.

That’s what our new government should be determined to do.

Anne Lindsey volunteers with the No Nukes MB campaign of the Manitoba Energy Justice Coalition and has been monitoring nuclear waste since the 1980s.