Clean fools’ standard

New clean fuel regulations are coming to Canada “in the coming months,” federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna announced earlier this month. She says the policy — titled the Clean Fuel Standard — is “a really important piece of our climate plan” and an “economic opportunity” for Canada. The idea behind the plan, which will require fuel producers to reduce the carbon intensity of their products, is being cheered on by Clean Energy Canada, an organization launched by Tides Canada in 2010 and now connected to Simon Fraser University.

According to a recent report from Clean Energy Canada, more federal fuel regulations would be an economic boon for the country. It argues that additional regulations “would increase economic activity in clean fuels in Canada by up to $5.6-billion a year in 2030” and create as many as 31,000 new jobs. Even after accounting for the negative effects of the regulations in other sectors, it is claimed, there will still be a large positive net effect on the economy and employment.

This is nonsense. The “logic” behind the claim that the Clean Fuel Standard would be economically beneficial is that government regulation somehow grows the economy by forcing people and businesses to spend money complying industries in the same way, by loading on regulations that require costly compliance?

This is the lens through which we should view the 31,000 new jobs that would be allegedly be created by Ottawa’s coming clean-fuel regulations. Is it good for the economy when 31,000 workers, rather than being Energy Act disaster orchestrated by the Ontario Liberals, who had promised that their strict new regulations dictating electricity generation would create 50,000 green jobs.

Reports from the province’s auditor general later found that around 30,000 jobs were “created” as opposed to 50,000, and most of the jobs were temporary construction work. Meanwhile, a recent Fraser Institute study estimated that 75,000 jobs were lost in Ontario’s manufacturing sector between 2008 and 2015 as a result of soaring electricity costs.

This is apparently what Liberals and climate activists consider economic success: diverting scarce resources from the production of desired goods and services to comply with environmental schemes that politicians dictate. The soonto-be-announced clean fuel regulations are just the latest example. They will make running a business costlier and Canada poorer.