Treehugger, by chance? Image licensed to Brian Zinchuk via Storyblocks
In concert with its nine year assault on the conventional energy sector, our federal Liberal government expanded the purview of its environmental bureaucracy. There are thousands of federal bureaucrats who’ve spent up to a decade thinking about ways to block pipelines and stifle expansion of Canada’s conventional energy sector. They are probably not all climate alarmists and emissions cutting fanatics, but it’s a safe bet lots are.
Even if our new prime minister remains true to his word and attempts to approve a pipeline or two from the prairies to tidewater, there are thousands of federal employees who know a lot more about cancelling pipelines than they do about getting them built. Or at least about getting them built without incurring billions in cost overruns. Their training and on the job experience have been geared to telling people in the gas, petroleum and pipeline sectors what they can’t do. It’s unlikely they can adopt a can-do approach overnight.
Blocking project approvals and derailing construction once underway must be hard work. Over the last nine years the Liberals had to significantly increase the number of employees in environment related departments and the amount of money they had to work with.
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For example, the budget for Environment Canada for 2014-2015, the last year the Harper Conservatives were in office was $1 billion. By 2024, the Trudeau Liberals had doubled it to $2 billion. There were 6,408 civil servants employed directly by Environment Canada in 2014. By 2024, Environment and Climate Change Canada had 8,901 bureaucrats on its payroll —a 40 per cent increase.
Under the Harper Conservatives there were 230 civil servants directing the management of the Impact Assessment Agency, with a budget of $8.3 million. The staff complement had more than doubled to 535 by 2024 and the budget increased to $110.56 million.
The foregoing examples don’t describe the full extent of the government expenditures on policing the environment. The BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) bureaucracy is wide, deep and diverse. For instance, there are other government agencies such as Fisheries and Oceans that can play a role ensuring things don’t get built.
Given the Trudeau Liberals’ record of cronyism and patronage you could knock me over with a feather if cabinet ministers like Stephen Guilbeault and key Trudeau advisor Gerald Butts didn’t pluck some of their disciples from the environmental movement and find them jobs in the Prime Minister’s Office, on ministerial staffs and in the civil service. Or even better, provide them with lucrative consulting contracts.
Definitely a treehugger. Perhaps a more woke treehugger? Image licensed to Brian Zinchuk via Storyblocks
No less important are the BANANA bureaucracy’s auxiliary agencies, Environmental NGOs and private sector consulting firms. In the years 2015-2019, alone, the Trudeau Liberals awarded approximately $373 million in grants to environmental organizations engaged in Anti-Alberta/Anti-oil sands campaigns. The activist groups did their part to facilitate Liberal anti-oil and pipeline policies by staging protests and blockades and filing numerous anti-pipeline lawsuits.
Liberal environmental laws and regulations were a goldmine for private firms specializing in environmental impact assessments and the monitoring and adjudication of efforts to block construction due to things like a bird nest or arrowhead discovered on a pipeline’s path. The government can count on the hundreds of people employed by environmental consulting firms to do their part in slowing down or outright cancelling a gas or petroleum related development. There is a wide range of recent university graduates who have real jobs in their chosen careers; environmental scientists, anthropologists, ecologists, hydrologists, etc.
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I wonder how such a firm could get on the list of government-approved environmental consultants? If it is anything like getting on the list of government-approved vendors during the pandemic, connections with current and past Liberal MPs wouldn’t hurt.
We might refer to the aforementioned people and agencies as Deep Green—a play on words alluding to Steve Bannon’s conception of the Deep State. Only in this case it would refer to the environmentally- uber-friendly civil servants and their allies in the environmental movement and private sector who preside over the array of Liberal policy measures inimical to the conventional energy sector.
Steve Bannon’s conception of the Deep State refers to thousands of unelected civil servants in the US government. Those who control government policy by virtue of the ability to draft, monitor and enforce legislation and, perhaps more importantly, a vast number of regulations. Some have investigative and policing powers and quasi-judicial authority to levy fines and other penalties.
The Deep State is large enough to enable many truly powerful people to remain relatively anonymous. Only a minority of senior officials receive much public attention, acclaim or blame. Nevertheless, they are jealous of their control over government policy and very good at protecting their jobs and their turf. They make very effective use of tactics which allow them to control information, confuse, frighten, mislead and intimidate elected members of Congress and the Cabinet. They are able to restrict public scrutiny to only those facets of their activities likely to receive public acclaim.
It sounds uncomfortably familiar.
Assuming Canada actually has a Deep Green State, it will hopefully prove to be less of a barrier to negotiating a fair deal for Canada’s conventional energy sector than Bannon’s dystopian characterization of government bureaucracy in the US.
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- 0092 Turnbull projects big and small0092 Turnbull projects big and small
- 0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser0046 City of Estevan This is Estevan Teaser
- 0087 Lori Carr Coal Expansion0087 Lori Carr Coal Expansion
- 0086 Sask Gov Oil and Gas Incentive Programs0086 Sask Gov Oil and Gas Incentive Programs
- 0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online0084 EMP Metals Pipeline Online
- 0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech0077 Caprice Resources Stand Up For Free Speech
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- 0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office0055 Smart Power Be Smart with your Power office
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- 0022 Grimes winter hiring
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