The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Can Canada Deliver On Its Renewed Natural Resources Ambition

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

The world may be changing rapidly, but one thing is not – its demand for natural resources, many of which Canada has supplied for generations. Oil, natural gas, metals and timber. And our new Liberal government seems to be embracing this country's past as a provider of raw materials, as well as increasing numbers of Canadians. But how can the government boost development while also balancing important modern considerations such as First Nations consultation and climate change? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The world may be changing rapidly, but one thing is not. It's demand for natural resources, many of which Canada has supplied for generations. The new Mark Carney government and an increasing number of Canadians seem to be embracing this country's desire to provide these raw materials. But how can our nation boost development while also balancing modern considerations such as First Nations consultation and climate change. Let's find out. In Calgary, Alberta, Heather Exner-Perot, Senior Fellow and Director of Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment at the McDonnell-Laurier Institute. In New York City, Eleanor Cerny, Chief News Editor at the Wall Street Journal and former Managing Editor at the Globe and Mail. And here in our studio for his eighth appearance on our program, Stan Sudol, editor of the Republic of Mining.

Stan, welcome back to you and to our friends in Points Beyond. We're glad you spared some time for us on TVO tonight. Elena, let me put you to work right away. What is the historic connection, just a little background, between natural resources extraction and our prosperity here in Canada over the years. Well, I mean we could write a treatise on that. Canada has been historically very dependent, obviously, on natural resources since the very earliest days of the fur trade and we could, you know, talk about that and the history there.

I think what's salient though here is that in recent decades, Canada has remained and indeed in some ways become increasingly dependent on fossil fuel extraction since the oil sands boom in the early aughts. And that really has led to the current debate over how to get some of this stuff to market effectively and sort of hand-wringing over why we haven't done a better job of that and have remained so dependent on those natural resources. Stan, could we be the country we are today without these resources? Absolutely not.

Between oil and gas on the West Coast, between the mining booms in northern Ontario, nickel, copper, cobalt in the Sudbury Basin, copper and ruin and randa, it's absolutely integral to the prosperity of the country. Let's see if people agree with you. We've got some numbers that we want to share here. So let us take a look at the change in sentiment among Canadians for natural resource products, specifically oil and gas pipelines. We're

going to do some comparison. February 2025, Angus Reid polling, gauging support for the Energy East oil pipeline from Alberta to Atlantic Canada. And we'll compare that to the same question asked in 2019, so six years ago. And for those listening on podcast, we got a bunch of bar graphs here, and I'm just gonna read, I'm gonna read across from left to right and let you know what's going on. So support for this project six years ago

was 58% across the country. Today, 65%. Up, let's go province by province. British Columbia, up 11 points. I'm gonna skip the next one. Saskatchewan, the same. Manitoba, up 9 points. Ontario, up 7 points.

Quebec, even Quebec, up 14 points. And in Atlantic Canada, up 6 points. The one outlier here, interestingly enough, is Alberta, where support has dropped, apparently, 12 points. Now, Heather, that's where I've got to get you in here and say, how is it possible in every other part of the country support is up, but in Alberta, the heart of oil and gas country, it's down.

Makes sense of that for us. Yeah. That's fascinating. I hadn't seen the breakdown by province. I had to point out Alberta was still the highest. But the reason is because Albertans are extremely energy literate and follow the oil and gas sector very closely. And what happened is that the business dynamics of Energy East

have changed dramatically. It used to be about filling a very large section of pipe that was being underutilized that has now been filled with natural gas. And so the business case for Energy East is very different. Could this pipeline, Heather, in your view, be built today? I mean, technically it could be built. Again, you're taking Alberta oil across the Canadian shield.

And that is a very difficult proposition. And at the time, like I say, to fill some underutilized pipe, it might have made sense. But from an Alberta perspective, if your goal is just to maximize production and maximize profits, which creates royalties and revenues and taxes and jobs for everybody, then you are looking to go west towards the Asian market. Stan, obviously in the previous Trudeau government, there was a strongly held sense in Western Canada that the federal government was not interested in building more pipelines.

They dubbed one of the bills that came out of Parliament the No More Pipelines Act. What, in your view, does Prime Minister Kearney have to do, legislatively, to prove to companies that the government is serious about allowing these new pieces of infrastructure to be built? He has to sort of temper down or eliminate that bill that riled basically the people in the Ring of Fire as well as Western Canadians.

And the one thing with resource development is yes, we need to peel back, not peel back, but at least limit some of the environmental regulations or the time it takes to either build a road or a pipeline. But at the same time, because it's crossing First Nations territories, you really do need to look at some sort of Marshall Plan for soft infrastructure in a lot of these communities centered on healthcare, education, housing supply. The problem with First Nations want to be consulted, and I was talking to Saul Maqua a few weeks ago. Queens Park MPP.

Yes. And the penny dropped. He basically said, you know, it's not like we, the consultation is basically basically part of the consultation process is basically what are you going to do to invest in our communities so we are job ready and are able to take advantage of the business opportunities and the jobs that are there and that part I'm not seeing done yet. I'm gonna come back to that in a second. Ellen, how well do you know Mark Carney?

Good question. I've interviewed him and met him over the years as Bank of Canada governor and also during his time representing the UN or representing, doing climate work for the UN. and so have had the chance to hear him talk at some length about his climate finance initiatives and his leadership on that front. Which I think is very interesting. Yeah, you've anticipated where I wanna go next, which is of course, as governor of the Bank of England,

as governor of the Bank of Canada, from his time at Brookfield, from his time associated with the United Nations, he has been pretty clear that the world has to do business differently in order to protect the environment and stave off the consequences of climate change. And yet, in his very short time as prime minister already, he's giving a lot of signals that he is open to much more significant oil and gas exploitation and related infrastructure projects.

How is he balancing these two seemingly conflicting approaches? Well, that is the, that's the big question. Is this Canada's moment to develop a model that other countries can to sort of balance climate concerns and energy development, conventional energy development in a way that becomes a model for the rest of the world? Is this something that is doable? Or is this goal of becoming an energy superpower

while also meeting Paris commitments, for example, magic thinking? Is there such a thing as decarbonized barrels of oil? I think those are some specifics that Canadians are going to want to hear spelled out and the ability of this government to pull off this delicate balancing act I think will be watched very closely around the world. Heather, you're watching. What are you coming up with? Well, it's kind of, you

know, the the worst part of the last ten years is that we've made this into an either-or conversation. And you need energy to survive and to thrive, and our civilization depends on fossil fuels. And yet, you also want to mitigate the environmental consequences. What I think people always miss is how good Canada is at doing that, at finding the balance. And so in almost any commodity you can think of, Canada usually performs in the top decile or the top quartile of GHG intensity. And part of it is our clean grid with lots of hydro.

Part of it is the high quality of our reserves and part of it is our high standards. And even on fossil fuels, our LNG is the cleanest in the world. Our conventional oil is far below the global average for GHG intensity. And even with our heavy barrels, yes, our bitumen from the oil sands

has a lower GHG intensity with our heavy barrels, yes our bitumen from the oil sands has a lower GHG intensity than comparable heavy barrels. And if we did something like the Pathways Alliance, you would even see that get below the global average of all crude. I guess I'm wondering though, given his background, do you believe the signals coming out of Ottawa today, coming out of Ottawa today, that he's serious about trying to get more oil and gas related infrastructure built? The, just cautious optimism out here for the first time in a decade.

So we do want to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is saying the right things, and Hodgson is saying the right things. And more than that, being more open to conversations and hearing from industry than we've had in a very long time. So of course, there'll be a honeymoon period, and then at some point, the rubber will hit the the road and we'll have to see some action but certainly people out here willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on the

path they're on right now. The Hodgson you referred to as Tim Hodgson the new natural resources minister so indeed and they know each other well so yes we are going to watch this team. Stan what are you thinking as you compare his very pro environment past to his seemingly very pro-infrastructure present? I think he's... there's a reality check, waking up and smelling the coffee. The economy is not doing well. There's a fellow called President Trump who is basically... We've heard of him. ...who is basically threatening the economic viability of our manufacturing sector as

well as some of our resource sector so we need to look at new markets for our oil and gas. As Heather may have mentioned the amount of tax revenue coming in from both our oil and gas sectors it's the largest part of the Canadian economy. Number two by a little bit of a second place, is Ontario's manufacturing economy. So we really do need resources to keep our standard of living high and to deal with whatever else President Trump is going to be throwing at us. Let me check with Eleanor and see whether she agrees with that. What's the sort of word on the street?

What is, as you look at the metrics, what is your sense about whether or not the demand for oil and gas related products in the future will be as strong as it has been in the past? Well, I think projections are sort of a little bit in flux on that and some of that will depend on things like the pace of EV adoption, for example, in the United States, which has flagged in recent years, and if subsidies go away, that will have an impact. So it's hard to sort of, I think, be precise. And, you know, you get all kinds of different ranges of estimates from from different players on when demand for fossil fuel products will actually peak. But

I think it's pretty clear, as Heather said, as both Heather and Stan have said, that the world is going to remain dependent on these products for some time to come. And Canada has these products to sell. The question is, can it be done in a way that balances the climate concerns and emissions concerns with the desire to get these products to market in a way that is economically beneficial to Canadians. Well, Heather, I guess the other question is, and I'm hearing a lot of people advancing this idea, do we really want to be spending or encouraging private companies to spend billions upon billions of dollars on more infrastructure to move a product which the world is very much trying to, maybe not

successfully, but trying to wean itself off of over the next 20 years. What do you think? Well, there's this argument of stranded assets. And the first one is to say that you'd much rather have a stranded asset than an energy crisis. An energy crisis is so painful and so horrible for the 8 billion people on this planet, and we saw that just three years ago. But do I think they'll be stranded assets? I don't. And even as we try to get off supply, one is population is still growing and population is actually moving

in large parts of the world from a low class to a middle class. And by definition, that means that they'll consume more energy. And so we do project more growth. The OPEC Secretary General yesterday projected it to 120 million barrels in the coming years. Whether we are at 80 million or 120 million barrels in 2050, it is very important that there is a democracy, a NATO ally that's providing a significant portion of that. And we know that American reserves and production is probably peaking.

EIA just called it. They're calling 2025 as peak oil production. We also know that Norwegian oil and gas production is probably peaking this year. And so whatever is the mix, you better make sure that Canada is providing a significant amount of it going forward. It is interesting that talk of climate change has almost disappeared as people fret, you know, not without reason, about the state of the economy today. And we talked to Mark Carney on this program four years ago about what he thought about climate change and what he intended to do about it.

Here's what he had to say. Sheldon, roll it if you would. It is one of the biggest risks to the Canadian economy and it's arguably the biggest opportunity for the Canadian economy. After all, as Prime Minister Harper used to say, rightly so, that Canada is an energy superpower. The energies of the future can build on Canadian strengths, including in carbon capture storage, hydrogen, in hydro, direct air capture, and beyond.

But we need to consciously pursue those while we manage our existing resources. Mr. Carney's really tried to make the point that this is not an either or situation, it's a both and. We can both tend to the environmental concerns we have while at the same time exploiting the natural resources that we do have. Is that really possible?

Absolutely. And just one point with the oil and gas story. Yes, it's largely used for heating and transportation. But a significant part of that sector is being processed into fertilizer and a whole slew of other products. Hundreds of products. We're not going to totally get rid of oil and gas even if everybody was driving an electric vehicle because there are some materials our modern society needs that are absolutely dependent

on oil and gas. So yes, I think we can do both. We can be a very clean, sustainable oil and gas producer, but at the same time as we electrify, we're going to need the nickel, the copper, the uranium in northern Saskatchewan, all the other products that go into the batteries and the charging stations, and also we have to remember that much of the electricity grid in the US was built in the 1950s during that boom, that all needs to be changed. The amount of copper that you need for that is just extraordinary. So we can walk in chew gum at the same time.

We can do both. Well, I wonder, Elena, is this a both and or a neither or? I think it depends on the specifics that we have not seen yet. And, you know, in looking at this, one, I read in one place, one commentator said that, you know, decarbonized oil is as absurd as talking about vitamin cigarettes or weight loss ice cream. That's one perspective. That's one perspective. But I think from what I understand the Carney super energy superpower vision, and the ability of Canada sort of walk and chew gum, it depends in part also on developing new technologies, new carbon capture technologies,

it depends on the Pathways Alliance, which I think Heather mentioned earlier. There's still a lot of questions about that technology and the ability to pull it off at a commercial scale. So I think we need to know a little bit more about the costing, about what these technologies can accomplish, and about really the government's plans to invest in them. Heather, I know they're talking in Northern Ontario about zero emission mining, and they think they're close. And that comes as a shock to anybody who has an image in their mind of guys on their knees going 5,000 feet below the Earth's surface and drilling for whatever.

Is it possible to imagine an oil and gas sector that actually exploits those resources in a way that doesn't harm the environment? You know, with 8 billion humans, there's going to be an impact on the environment. I think this is a luxury question to think, can we do this, you know, with impacts on the environment or without impacts on the environment? No, you cannot have 8 billion people. You cannot support modern civilization without some resource extraction. And so the question is, how do we do it the best?

And I think the policy the last 10 years has been about making our sector smaller. And the benefit series of that has been countries like China and Russia who's been able to adopt more market share. The question should be, and the trade-off is, will we be developing it in the ways that we know are best-in-class global leading standards, or will we lead it to other countries to develop it in ways that we know are not? And so, yes, there's so much happening in technology and innovation. There's a huge clean tech sector in Alberta and Western Canada

and BC. And they're looking for the market opportunities, and they're trying to reduce those emissions and trying to decarbonize the barrel, which to me is just lowering the GHG intensity of that barrel. And so yes, there are innovations where you're using electric vehicles in underground mining.

If you have access to hydropower to do that, fantastic. If you don't, then we're thinking about using SMRs for that in the future. We're even thinking about using SMRs in the oil sense. Again, because a large part of that GHG intensity is the natural gas used to heat the bitumen so it'll flow. So everyone is on board with this, and we don't think it's a zero-sum game. You don't think reducing emissions is going to harm the sector. We think it's going to create that sustainable life span for it.

Just so I'm clear, SMRs, small modular reactors, these are the new nukes that are coming forward? Yes, I thought your Ontario audience would know all about that, Steve. I'm sure they do, just checking. I want to circle back to what Stan raised earlier, which is the notion of First Nations participation and or consultation in all of this. And we did a program here not too long ago because of course the province of Ontario just passed something called Bill 5, which has angered some in the First Nations communities, not all but some, because it purports to give the government new powers to exploit natural resources in ways that perhaps were not there before.

Here is Moose Creek First Nation Chief Peter Wesley and his reaction to that change. Sheldon, if you would. Prior to Bill 5 coming out, we reached out to Premier Ford and Minister Rickford to engage with us. Because we're like that, like what's been stated here, we're not against development. We just want you to work with us in how we want things to be developed within our homeland. And we never received a response. How would you rate the level of trust between the current government of Ontario

and the First Nations who are rightly concerned about their need to be consulted on this as the Supreme Court has laid out? Very, very low. I, you know, I was a, I'm a keen proponent for mining in Aboriginal consultation. I've been on this program. This government seemed to have been doing the right thing. I think now they've done a couple of steps backwards because of this sledgehammer approach. I think instead of trying to

bulldoze their way, pardon the pun, and... That's what the Premier said. He said get on a bulldozer himself and build a road in northwestern Ontario if he had to. You could have done this a lot better in the sense of bring your checkbooks with you, both federal and provincial, with more investment in these communities. You have a power line called the Watte Power Line, which connects 24 isolated first communities. You already have an industrial corridor going, snaking through northwestern Ontario, why not start building a gravel road beside the power line? There's a section between Red Lake and Sandy Lake. This is northwestern Ontario?

Yeah. And basically you have 10,000 isolated communities, they want the road, they've had problems with wildfires this past few weeks. Deer Lake, which has the biggest lithium mine next to it, they took them four days to evacuate the community and they were worried the fire was going to take out the airport. If there's not a critical need for the roads before, because winter or college roads are very short because of global warming that you almost lost your airport to a fire gives you added impetus to say build

these roads and build them now. Elena, how does trust get restored? I think that's a very complex question and it's going to depend on the province and the jurisdiction and whether you're talking about First Nations communities. But I think details seem to be lacking in all of these questions. Stan talked about the need for a Marshall Plan. If you want communities to buy in and you want them to, whether it's a Quebec community or a First Nations community,

I think it's got to be clear to them what's in it for them and what the stakes are. And not just sort of in an abstract what this means for Canada kind of a way, but what does this actually mean for me and my family? Where are the jobs? And what will happen if we don't do this? And those details just don't, we're in this honeymoon period, but those details, it would seem, need to be forthcoming for there to be actual movement here. And Heather, let me ask you the flip side of this, which is, is it possible that some governments and some companies

are going to have to just simply accept the fact that in some indigenous communities, they are not going to be interested in exploiting these resources or participating in them? So I mean we've been getting much better at this out west in particular but across Canada for the last 20 years since the duty to consult was affirmed in the Supreme Court of Canada. And when I hear about the Ring of Fire that's often the worst case scenario. There's lots of mining projects and lots of oil and gas projects and lots of pipeline projects and lots

of transmission projects where there actually is a pretty good relationship and where the benefits are pretty clear. And as the chief that you had speaks to that they're not against development, they're against being left out. And we have some tools in the toolbox now to make sure that they are included and they do benefit. I talked about procurement, about employment employment and now recently about equity.

You are seeing more and more projects where indigenous communities are equity owners. The law is clear, there is a duty to consult and accommodate based on impacts on rights. It's not a veto, it isn't in Canadian law to be able to say no. What the circumstance is, you have to accommodate the impacts on those rights. And on the other side though, for indigenous communities, there is also a reciprocal duty to articulate what are those impacts on rights? What are some solutions that you could mitigate them?

And so there's an expectation of reasonableness on both sides. Both sides plus the government have to come in with solutions and it's not enough to just be in principle opposed to a project. The opposition has to be based on the impacts on rights and you have to be reasonable in trying to find ways to mitigate those impacts. Standa should ask you because I got a note from somebody the other day who watches this stuff in Northern Ontario and he said to me, you can't paint the entire Indigenous community

with the same brush in as much as some are in favor of resource extraction and being partners and being a part of all of that. But others are opposed. But if you look at where the resources are, you won't find opposition. You will find opposition elsewhere. Is that your understanding of things? It's partly true. In regards to the chief from Muscree, what people aren't aware of is they have an incredible impact benefit agreement with Agnico Eagles detour gold open pit. 20% of the workforce is indigenous. They're getting tens of millions of dollars of royalty payments from that massive gold mine, hundreds of millions of dollars of royalty payments from that massive gold mine. Hundreds of millions of dollars on a yearly basis with indigenous business contracts

with Detour Gold Mine. So that's the gold plate standard. Even on the other side in Saul's home community of Kingfisher, it's very close to the Musselwhite Underground Gold Mine. And there's impact benefit. It's one of the oldest mines built in the early mid 90s and they have impact benefit agreements with Kingfisher First Nation, North Caribou, Lake First Nation, percentage of the the work force is indigenous,

there's indigenous business contracts. So you know where their mining is there and this was in the mid-90s, the companies are really digging deep, pardon the pun, of training Aboriginals and having business opportunities. We've got to be careful just not to sort of lump everybody into the same category here. Absolutely. Okay. I've got about a minute left here. Heather, I want to ask you, since you're in Calgary right now, I gather there's about

30,000 oil and gas decision makers from around the world currently in that city for the Global Energy Show Canada. You're going to it. What do we need to know? Well, I mean, the big news was, of course, OPEC Secretary General yesterday. But I guess, you know, there is optimism in the Canadian sector. Again, we're starting to look pretty good to other options, our global peers, whereas for the last 10 years we've looked pretty bad. But starting to look like Canadian Oil and Gas is where you want your investment to be. We have just an incredible long reserve life, low decline rates, you know, over a century's

worth of production on both the oil and gas side. And so, you know, when you're going into turbulence, and we've shown at these low prices that we have today between $60, $65 WTI, that actually the Canadian barrel is quite resilient at that level. So we 60, $65 WTI, that actually the Canadian barrel is quite resilient at that level. So we're looking for brighter times ahead. And for once, you know, it seems like we might have a partner in the federal government. WTI, West Texas International.

Thank you, Steve. We like to be an acronym free zone here, but anyway, I get it. Elena, last 20 seconds, what's it like for a Canadian to live in Trump's America right now? Fascinating times. Great time to be a journalist in the United States. Never a dull moment.

And I think it's really important to continue chronicling and reporting on events as they unfold, hopefully in a dispassionate and impartial and calm way so that we really get the facts. There's not a lot of that going on, Elena, so we rely on you to make sure that happens. Let me thank Heather Exner-Perot, MacDonald-Laurier Institute in Calgary,

Elena Cherny, Wall Street Journal in New York City, and Stan Sudol, Republic of Mining, here in our studio. Great to have all of you with us on TVO tonight. Many thanks. Thank you.