Too much like the last Trudeau

budgeted 2017–18 deficit has rocketed to $18 billion, with continuing deficits forecast to add $117 billion to the national debt by 2023. That’s reason enough to worry, but the picture is certain to get much worse. Why? For the same reason that Pierre Trudeau’s deficits spiralled out of control: the imposition of ideologically socialist government policies on a capitalist free-market economy.

Raising marginal personal tax rates to over 50 per cent at the same time as the U.S. is reducing them places Canadian companies at a competitive disadvantage in attracting and retaining highly mobile skilled workers. And it’s no longer enough just to invest and create jobs. Businesses are now expected to demonstrate they are adhering to the government’s social agenda, including gender equity and the hiring of ethnic minorities in order to qualify for government contracts or support for entrepreneurial start-ups. A bureaucratic new regulatory regime for resource projects reinforces Canada’s reputation as a country where it’s hard to get anything done. All of this, combined with Ottawa’s increasingly evident anti-business government attitude, has seriously eroded Canada’s formerly strong reputation as a place to do business. It should come as no surprise that, since the second Trudeau government came to power, Canada’s business investment, as a share of GDP, has fallen to second-last among 17 industrialized OECD countries.

Those are the self-inflicted wounds. Canada’s economic prospects are further dimmed by a U.S. administration that is suspicious of free trade. No one expects Canada to come out of the NAFTA negotiations unscathed, and the downside is potentially profound. Beyond NAFTA, there’s the ad hoc import penalties on lumber exports and threatened penalties on steel and aluminum.

Combining self-inflicted wounds and external eco- nomic threats makes the government’s deficit projections look dangerously naïve. Instead of using the extra revenue generated from the currently strong economy to balance the budget, this government has introduced new structural spending programs that are certain to see the deficits continue to climb. Another recession is coming some day, and a recent Fraser Institute analysis found that a “fairly serious” downturn could add more than $50 billion per year to the government’s deficit forecast. That would take Canada’s national debt from around $600 billion when the Trudeau government came to power to nearly $1 trillion by 2023.

And then there’s that other, impossible to miss parallel. On Oct. 28, 1980, a day that will live in infamy to the many hundreds of thousands who were employed in Canada’s oil and gas industry, Pierre Trudeau announced what is surely the most confiscatory and interventionist industrial policy in the history of Canada. The National Energy Program (NEP) took away access to international commodity prices and imposed punitive taxes that were to be “reinvested” in oil and gas projects and companies favoured by Ottawa. The NEP caused an almost complete collapse in industry investment and employment, fomenting anger and distrust that still smoulders in Alberta today.

Thirty-five years later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enraged Albertans with a remark that revealed his own agenda against Alberta’s oil and gas industry: “We can’t shut down the oil sands tomorrow. We need to phase them out.” Even as the struggling industry handed over $15 billion per year in captive market price discounts to American importers, Trudeau reversed the Harper government’s approval of the Northern Gateway pipeline, which would have carried oil to tidewater through northern B.C. His stated reason: The “Great-Bear Rainforest is no place for a pipeline….” But the so-called Great Bear Rainforest didn’t even exist during the regulatory process (until 2016, it was just called the Central and North Coast forest).

Meanwhile, a proposed new oil pipeline to eastern Canadian seaports became so entwined in Quebec’s political opposition, complicated by the federal government’s decision to restart National Energy Board regulatory hearings into the project, that the proponent withdrew after sinking $1 billion into planning costs. The only project left now that can move Alberta oil exports to tidewater is the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to Burnaby B.C., which Trudeau reluctantly approved only after the Alberta government agreed to inflict on its own people heavy carbon taxes and growth limits on its industry.

Then, just last month, the Trudeau government disbanded Canada’s National Energy Board, a regulatory agency whose technical and administrative competency was admired around the world. In its place, a new mega-bureaucracy takes on responsibility for all resource projects including oil and gas, mining and nuclear. New legislation is also expanding the definition of the “interested persons” who have a right to participate in regulatory hearings from those “directly affected” to virtually everyone, including rabid antiindustry international NGOs. As the former CEO of a company that invested tens of billions in Canadian resource projects, it’s hard for me to imagine why anyone would risk shareholder capital on such a costly and uncertain regulatory process. No wonder that my former firm, Encana, along with many other Canadian oil and gas companies, is shifting billions of dollars to the vastly more welcoming and efficient U.S. regulatory environment.

When Pierre Trudeau was askedhowfarhewouldgoin his fight against separatists, he famously replied “Just watch me.” He was right that someone’s true principle is revealed not in what they say, but what they do. Justin Trudeau won’t admit that, like his dad, his ideology is one of tax-and-spend, anti-business and anti-Alberta-oil. But it’s perfectly clear from his actions that he is indeed his father’s son. Just watch him. attempt to secure his legacy. Congress must also do all in our power to fight against this damaging climate change proposal and pursue policies that support American energy, create new jobs, and power our economy.”

Feb. 9, 2016. Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) released the following statement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to halt enforcement of President Obama’s Clean Power Plan:

“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court acknowledges the massive flaws in President Obama’s extremist climate change agenda. Blocking the implementation of this economically disastrous regulation that will raise electricity prices for families in Kansas and kill jobs all across America is only the first step in making sure this administration’s draconian environmental policy does not go into effect. The Supreme Court is rightfully concerned that the Environmental Protection Agency has overstepped its legal authority. I look forward to the Court acknowledging what many of us have been saying: the Clean Power Plan is illegal.”