Convoy protesters seek to maintain pressure
Believe Trudeau heard pleas for energy sector
• Doug Brownridge has spent long hours fretting about what the federal carbon tax will mean for his 2,430-hectare farm near Estevan, Sask., where he grows various lentils and grains like peas, canola, flaxseed and wheat.
Although emissions from farm equipment are exempt from the federal carbon tax, he worries that the cost of shipping his product, among other things like chemicals and fertilizers, could substantially drive up operating expenses.
“It’s not like I’m running a small family car for 6,000 clicks a year,” he says.
For business owners in emissions-intensive industries, Brownridge said, the recently announced federal rebate is of little comfort.
The government estimates that an average family in Saskatchewan will receive $598 in carbon-tax rebates in 2019, and pay just $403 in carbon taxes — well below what Brownridge expects to fork out this year.
“The rebate is nothing,” he said. “It’s a redistribution of wealth.”
Brownridge’s concerns about the carbon tax, which came into force in Saskatchewan this year, is part of what compelled him to make the roughly 2,500-kilometre journey from Estevan to Ottawa with the United We Roll convoy, a pro-industry movement established in Alberta.
His concerns also point to deeper anxieties felt in Western provinces over the embattled oil and gas industry, which Westerners feel has been swept aside by policymakers in the nation’s capital.
Those anxieties came to the surface at United We Roll rallies in Ottawa on Tuesday and Wednesday, where protesters targeted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, Bill C-69 energy reforms and continued delays in building the Trans Mountain pipeline.
At the same time, protesters talked about their difficulties making ends meet amid a prolonged downturn in oil-dependent provinces.
A lack of pipeline capacity has severely depressed Canadian oil prices in recent months, while a number of experts have warned that the contentious C-69 could hinder new pipeline projects from ever being proposed.
In a report set to be released Thursday, the C.D. Howe Institute says capital expenditures in oil and gas, mining and electrical power fell $50 billion between 2014 and 2018, down to $75 billion, and warns that C-69 could further restrict such investments.
“With investment in Canada’s resources sector already depressed, the federal government’s proposed Bill C-69 could further discourage investments by congesting the assessment process with wider public policy concerns and increasing political uncertainty,” the report says.
In particular, the report points to a “highly subjective” standard of assessing new projects under the proposed regime.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil giant Devon Energy Corp. announced on Wednesday that it was planning to sell the entirety of its oil assets in Canada, joining a number of other foreign energy companies that have divested of their Canadian holdings in recent years.
A wave of divestments worth tens of billions of dollars, including such firms as Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Conocophillips Co., have spread fears that foreign investors have finally turned their backs on Canada’s weakened oil sector, particularly amid low confidence in its regulatory regime.
As the United We Roll convoy dispersed on Wednesday to head back west, it was unclear whether policymakers had taken note of participants’ angst.
Glen Carritt, who organized the protest, said he “absolutely” believes the prime minister and his government got the message.
“If they didn’t hear this, then they’re more disconnected than I thought,” he said.
Carritt said the group hopes to maintain momentum from the rally by putting forward petitions to scrap the federal carbon tax, Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, the oil tanker moratorium in northern B.C.
He said they would work with western Conservative MPS Bob Zimmer, Rachael Harder, Blaine Calkins and others on the petitions.
Brownridge, for his part, was less optimistic the message had gotten through to policymakers, saying he was “disappointed” by the media’s intense focus on elements of the rally that it deemed white supremacist, or at least anti-immigrant.
The farmer emphasized that he was strictly voicing concerns over the carbon tax, a lack of pipelines and Bill C-69, and gestured toward slogans scrawled on his massive white trailer as proof.
“You don’t see anything about immigration here.”