The Protestor Becomes The Protested

Yesterday, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Steven Guilbeault, held a press conference to announce the end of so-called "fossil fuel subsidies".

This eradication of fossil fuel subsidies was part of an agreement the Canadian government made with fellow G20 nations back in 2009.

But despite that decades-old promise, Ottawa is set to be the first country in the G20 to actually implement a "framework for eliminating inefficient fossil fuel subsidies" - not a single other country has followed through.

Still, in theory, as free-marketers, we’re all for eliminating government subsidies, so what's the problem?

Well, with this plan - as is often the case - the devil truly is in the details, specifically around how environmental activists are twisting the definition of subsidy.

We’ll have a complete analysis of all those details for you on Thursday, but for now, I wanted to highlight a particularly revealing moment that proved something that we’ve been saying for years.

You see, Guilbeault’s press conference was interrupted by radical climate protestors.

Which is particularly ironic, given Guilbeault's background as a former radical climate protester himself. 

(For those who aren’t aware, before being elected as a Member of Parliament and assuming his current cabinet position, Guilbeault was actively involved in Greenpeace, even getting arrested multiple times for various climate protest "stunts".)

But it's not the irony of Guilbeault going from orange jumpsuit to business casual that's most interesting here.

Rather, it was his reaction to the protestors.

Instead of disagreeing with their demands or disavowing calls to abolish oil and gas, he all but agreed with them.

You would think that, with the government at least trying to portray themselves as more moderate, he would disavow the protestors' demands to abolish oil and gas.

But no, he actually agreed with them!

In a revealing slip of his mask, Guilbeault wondered why they weren’t happy with his announcement.

After all, his government gave them what they wanted.

"You should be happy with this announcement! This is something that you've called for, for many years," he said.

His government is promoting extremely radical policies, but the eco-activists are so much further out to lunch that they’re protesting him for not going far enough.

And - again - he agreed with them!

But, while attempting to placate his former comrades in climate action, Guilbeault forgot a major lesson in left-wing activism.

As soon as you get what you want, move the Overton Window even further to the left.

Once the government gave in to their previous demands, the activists moved the goalposts even further and are now complaining about how weak the government is for doing precisely what they were demanding it do just a few months ago.

Our friends at the Free Alberta Strategy wrote about this strategy earlier this year when the federal government announced their emissions cap:

Having called for precisely this type of emissions cap for years and years, you would think that Rachel Notley and Justin Trudeau's allies in the eco-activist industry would be ecstatic about the announcement of an emissions cap, right?

Well, they aren’t.

They are far, far, far from ecstatic.

In fact, when Guilbeault announced that their long-sought-after policy was to be implemented, they actually attacked it!

That's because now, instead of advocating for an emissions cap, they think their own idea is woefully inadequate.

They now want, you guessed it, a cap on production!

They don't actually care about the level of carbon emissions.

They don't actually care whether emissions go down.

They want the amount of oil and gas produced to go down.

In fact, they want it phased out altogether.

This, fellow Albertans, is what we are up against.

The radical eco-activist environmental movement doesn't want Alberta's oil and gas industry to be more environmentally friendly; they want Alberta's oil and gas industry to die.

Unlike the federal government, we know that giving in to the protestors who want to destroy our natural resource industry will never make them happy.

They won’t be satiated until the industry is decimated.

Give an inch, and they’ll take the whole pipeline.

So, where is this insanity headed if we don’t do something?

Well, we made a prediction about exactly that when Steven Guilbeault was first made Minister of Environment and Climate Change back in 2021:

Winston Churchill famously criticized appeasers, saying: "each one hopes that if he feeds the crocodile enough, the crocodile will eat him last."

His point was that repeated compromise that allows your opponent to repeatedly shift the goalposts only delays your inevitable demise, rather than preventing it.

If the federal government and environmental radicals are today's crocodiles, and Alberta's energy industry is the meat, why are we still feeding them?

Anyone who thinks these crocodiles intend to stop feeding after the first few bites is deluding themselves.

Under the guise of "Build Back Better" and a "Just Transition" Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is planning a deliberate and systematic elimination of all oil and gas development within Canada.

The appointment of radical eco-activist, Steven Guilbeault, as Minister of Environment and Climate Change was just the opening salvo in their war to "save the world" from Climate Change.

…

Another radical environmentalist, David Suzuki, recently warned at an Extinction Rebellion rally that "there are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on".

While oil and gas workers have struggled to find work for years, and many massive projects have been cancelled, blocked, or abandoned, thanks to government policy, the activists are so far to the left that they think our leaders aren't even paying attention.

Which leads to the obvious question - what would our leaders paying attention look like to these guys?

The answer, of course, is the complete shut down Canada's entire oil and gas industry, and violent protests if they don't get their way.

So, just how many more energy projects, how many more jobs, how many more livelihoods should we feed to the crocodiles before we wake up and realize that they don't plan on stopping, and appeasement doesn't work?

How about zero.

Let's stop feeding the beast and start pushing back instead.

As we said, we’ll have a more detailed analysis of the government’s specific proposals on Thursday.

In the meantime, if you’d like to help us push back, and support our work, please consider making a donation today:

Regards,

Josh Andrus
Executive Director
Project Confederation