A group of Canadian elites have created the “Coalition for a Better Future” [ the “Coalition”] with laudable goals. They are going to measure success against a scorecard they have made public.
Many of the goals are worthwhile and should be part of any vision for Canada. It is certainly worthwhile to target higher Research & Development and greater capital investments in support of productivity, or that our society should strive to reduce poverty, and have broadband internet access in every household to improve life in underserved areas of our vast country. The Coalition hopes to foster more globally competitive companies and a strong current account trade balance. I was nearly sold on the values this group espouses until I read other goals that are not only nonsensical but destructive.
Human Capital and Living Standards
Targeting a greater percentage of women and indigenous people in senior management positions as a stand alone goal is introducing “systemic prejudice” into a society where advancement should be based on merit and only merit. Canada would be well served if all senior management persons were women or indigenous (or any other group identity or no group identity at all) if they were the best candidates for those roles, but not if knowledge and competence were compromised to meet some artificial goal.
Income parity across genders and persons of disability is silly. I have dealt with this nonsense in a separate article which delves into the nature of income differences by gender entitled “The gender “pay gap” results from preference, not prejudice”. Disabled persons should and do receive a great deal of support from Canada, but to pretend that their disabilities do not often affect their earning power is specious and does them a disservice if we pretend it does not. Working to improve their economic condition and expand the range of opportunities disabled persons have available is a worthwhile effort but setting “income parity” as a goal as if disability came without barriers to success is more likely to lead to frustration and disappointment than improve what is already a difficult challenge for many disabled Canadians.
Climate Change
The goals set by the Coalition in response to our changing climate are outright nonsense and adopts the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory holus bolus despite the inconsistency of this unproven theory with the laws of physics and chemistry, and the inescapable reality that targeting and achieving “Net Zero” is a dangerous tack not only for Canada but also for the world at large. As I have written about elsewhere, Net Zero is more likely to lead to the end of human civilization than anything CO2 itself can inflict on the world.
The Coalition’s climate change goals will hamper the achievement of the economic goals the group has set by hamstringing our vital energy industry and labouring under the misapprehension that “zero carbon” sources are a realistic approach to providing the primary energy Canada needs. Only nuclear has the potential to one day replace fossil fuels and the resistance to expansion of nuclear power seems even greater than the abhorrence this group has for fossil fuels. The chosen metric of “Clean Tech contribution to GDP” is more likely to measured as a negative number than a positive one as the artificial shortage of cheap and reliable fossil fuels drives world fossil fuel prices through the roof, a trend that is already underway. I point out in passing that natural gas prices in the United Kingdom recently hit the equivalent of US$60 per thousand cubic feet 1 which is [on a British Thermal Unit (BTU) equivalence to oil basis]2 is the equivalent of CAD$450.00 per barrel oil. Many British families are suffering “energy poverty” and being forced to choose between heating their homes and having enough food and this will get worse before it improves.
So who are the members of this Coalition? They are kind enough to show their faces on the Coalition’s web site. They include such luminaries as Anne McLellan, Perrin Beatty, Carolyn Wilkins, Stephen McNeil and Lisa Raitt and comprise a group that crosses political party lines with a strong view that more government control and less personal freedom are needed to build the Canada they envision. Basically, both Carolyn Wilkins and Anne McLellan go so far as to say that capitalism and free markets aren’t working and needs to be replaced by what they call “stakeholder capitalism” which is an attempt to compel corporations to assume the burden of society’s goals, ignoring the fact that those goals seem to change every election.
It is the anti-capitalist sentiment and desire for more government influence over society that makes up the danger to our democracy, just as it has in other countries throughout history. Post World War I Germany embraced Adolf Hitler’s vision of Germany which promoted many of the same kinds of social goals the Coalition does - until he had power and became one of the worst monsters in recorded history. Venezuela’s transition from a constitutional democracy to a communist state took place in one generation and is a textbook case of the risks of too much government control sold to citizens as for the greater “social good”. If you listen to Carolyn Wilkins speech regarding the Coalition’s aims and vision, you could easily have been listening to Hugo Chavez only 24 years ago when the Venezuelan society took a sharp left turn with disastrous consequences that caused political chaos in only twenty years.
The Fraser Institutes’ Matthew Lau summed up the risks the Coalition presents in a recent op-ed worth reading. At this stage, the Coalition is little more than a well-meaning group of Canadian leaders from all parts of the political spectrum raising their collective voices to make one thing certain - the Canada I grew up in doesn’t exist any more and the people in a position to change it have lost their minds.
They are now about $30 U.S. per Mcf
A barrel of oil produces 6.1 times as many BTU’s of heat as a thousand cubic feet of natural gas