Q. “In all the articles and debates on climate change, reference is made to government subsidies to the oil and gas industry. I would like to understand what exactly we subsidize in Canada and on what logic. ”
Christian Proulx
R. You put your finger on a sore that we have the pleasure of scratching for you.
Let us settle the case of logic from the outset.
If we accept the conclusions of the International Energy Agency, which believes that we must stop investing in new fossil fuel supply projects …
If we know that it is necessary at all costs to limit the rise in the earth’s temperature to 1.5 ° C by 2100 and that the energy sector is the source of three quarters of greenhouse gases. greenhouse of human origin that are found in the atmosphere …
If it is clear that Justin Trudeau is right, therefore, to want to implement his plan to cap emissions from the oil and gas sector …
So, no, it doesn’t make sense to give billions in subsidies and aids of all kinds every year to Canada’s oil and gas industry.
Absolutely not.
“These are only political motivations that ensure that, despite the commitments of the Canadian government and the G20 since 2009, we continue to subsidize the oil and gas industry in Canada, which relies on an impressive lobbying force,” said Greenpeace Canada Climate-Energy campaign manager Patrick Bonin.
“It exerts continuous pressure on the government to keep these subsidies,” he adds.
But Canada, you should know, is far from being the only one to be untenably generous with regard to the hydrocarbon sector.
The UN Secretary General referred to this problem in mid-November, when he complained about the timidity of the commitments made at COP26. “The promises ring hollow when the fossil fuel industry continues to receive trillions in subsidies,” he said.
Note that among this waltz of billions, it is very difficult to assess the exact amount that is paid on an annual basis to the Canadian fossil fuel industry.
Oil Change International published a study last October according to which, between 2018 and 2020, Canada allocated some $ 14 billion in financial assistance of all kinds to various industry players each year.
A few months earlier, the Environmental Defense organization had estimated that this aid, specifically for the year 2020, had amounted to nearly $ 18 billion.
This figure takes into account “subsidies, but also funding, which comes mainly from Export Development Canada,” explained one of the organization’s officials, Dale Marshall, who deplores Ottawa’s lack of transparency in this area. .
However, we can expect significant changes in the coming years. They could be announced in the next federal budget.
In the last federal election campaign, the Liberals promised they would “eliminate subsidies to the fossil fuel industry” as early as 2023.
They also plan to “develop a plan to phase out public funding for the fossil fuel sector, including state corporations.”
The devil is in the details, you might say.
It’s true.
It will be to follow very closely.
All the more so since the federal government has become accustomed to claiming that there are “ineffective” subsidies and others that they deem “effective”.
It is presumed that these latter include, among other things, the amounts offered to the industry so that it can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
But even these subsidies are controversial.
“These companies are making extraordinary profits in 2021. We will pay them so that they have a better environmental performance when we could achieve [cet objectif] with regulations? Dale Marshall said, stressing that these are sums that will not go, for example, to the renewable energy industry.
Certainly, a little logic, in this area, would do us the greatest good.
And the planet needs it.