OUR ENERGY POLICIES ARE DAMAGING

Canada is cutting its own economic throat by stifling its oil and gas sector, according to a new report by the International Energy Agency. The IEA says Canada is reducing itself to a bit player on global energy markets and walking away from up to $600 billion worth of job-creating international investments in the Canadian economy by 2040.

The three major reasons, according to the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook report, are:

Canada’s onerous regulatory regime for

■ getting oil and gas projects and pipelines approved, along with the imposition of carbon pricing.

Our resulting inability to get our landlocked

■ oil and gas resources in Western Canada to global markets.

The American boom in oil and gas production ■ using hydraulic fracturing, which is turning the U.S. into the world’s top producer of oil and gas, for both domestic use and to sell on global markets, leaving Canada in its wake.

Contrary to the rhetoric of the Trudeau government that the age of fossil fuels is ending, the IEA predicts global energy demand by 2040 will increase by 30 per cent, as large as the combined energy needs of China and India today.

While demand will not grow as quickly as in the past because of a gradual rise in renewable energy, the IEA predicts global oil demand will still increase to 104 million barrels per day by 2040, compared to 94 million in 2016.

Canada will benefit to some extent from this increase, but not as much as it could have.

The irony is that on the one issue the Trudeau government always talks about — reducing industrial greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change — the U.S. has done a far better job than Canada over the past three decades.

This according to the Global Carbon Budget, an authoritative scientific study released at the United Nations’ annual climate change meeting in Bonn.

The major reason is that the U.S. has replaced much of its coal power with cheaper natural gas — which burns at half the carbon intensity of coal — made available through the use of fracking technology.

In other words, under the energy policies of the Trudeau government, Canadians are stuck with the worst of both worlds, in terms of our economy and the environment.