CCCE - Canadian corporate eco-dupes and rent-seekers

Peter Foster: "Harper faces green caliphate":

Next week, Canadian federal and provincial energy and mines ministers will convene in Kananaskis, Alta., to discuss, among other issues, a “national energy strategy.”

... with the 1980 National Energy Program ... the main threat to the petroleum industry was economic nationalism; now it’s radical environmentalism.

... the Conservatives have more ideological backbone than the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, the CCCE, which this week released its pre-Kananaskis submission.

Here is the CCCE’s version of Energy Superpower: “Canada is very well placed to be a leader in the global transition to cleaner energy and advanced technologies that can deliver superior energy services with much less environmental impact.”

... Sounds more like a ringing endorsement for Dalton McGuinty’s disastrous Green Energy Act... falling into the trendy moralistic trap of talking about “cleaner” energy, the CEOs are supporting the notion that oil, and particularly oil sands oil, is “dirty.” They are also demonstrating how far their thinking has been infiltrated by subversive notions of green “social licence.”

The CCCE submission ... waffles on about all the ways that government can “help” via loan guarantees, subsidies and channelling money from carbon taxes to public-private partnerships dedicated to fuels of the future.

... A Canadian national energy strategy should attempt to create a coherent framework to exploit the country’s bountiful fossil-fuel resources, adopting a balanced environmental policy that isn’t driven by hysteria ...

... If Mr. Harper wanted to make a really bold move, part of his national energy strategy would be to hold hearings on the state of climate science ... [However] While Mr. Harper has a majority, he is also... a pragmatist, and knows that there is just so much inconvenient truth that any politician can afford to promote.