Breakdown: The Pipeline Debate and the Threat to Canada's Future

by Dennis McConaghy, Deborah Yedlin (Foreword)

2019/20 The Donner Prize ― Winner

Is a national consensus on hydrocarbon development possible?

The ongoing debate in Canada over the extraction of hydrocarbon resources and their transportation to markets exemplifies the country’s political polarization. Breakdown explores these tensions through economic, environmental, and political perspectives.

The Trudeau Liberals and Alberta’s one-term NDP government attempted to find a compromise that satisfies the concerns of British Columbia, Canada’s First Nations, and environmentalists. But they still could not break the impasse on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. With new players now at the table, can Canada find a reasonable path forward?

216 pages, Paperback

Published September 24, 2019

Reviews

[Frederic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unfortunately, the people who most need to read this book, voters in Ontario, Québec and coastal BC, probably won't. Those who do read it probably won't believe what they read or will tune out.

Nobody outside Alberta and Saskatchewan cares much about pipelines, which sound boring. Canadians don't think about how their homes are heated and their cars are fuelled. Nobody cares about Alberta, which is generally the object of schadenfreude or disdain within Canada. The average Canadian is happy as long as her house is increasing in value, gasoline is cheap and her government makes soothing, progressive noises about social and environmental issues.

Economics is dull and Canada's current Prime Minister has no familiarity with the subject. Most Canadians aren't aware that oil and gas is Canada's number one export, nor that the industry they love to hate disproportionately funds the social programs they treasure, no matter where they live.

Author and former TransCanada Pipelines (now TC Energy) executive Dennis McConaghy describes how under the Justin Trudeau government, Canada's approval process for pipelines, already the slowest in the developed world, has been deliberately politicized, lengthened and shifted toward mob rule. He outlines the unintended consequences of Trudeau's deliberate sabotage of market access for Canada's petroleum products: massive loss of investment, jobs, tax revenue and transfer payments, none of which can be replaced by rainbow coloured fantasies of renewable energy driven prosperity.

This is especially tragic in light of Trudeau's tidal wave of government debt. A crippled energy sector will make the massive Trudeau debt burden much harder for voters to repay, even with much higher future taxes.

Read this book and understand why Justin Trudeau is the worst prime minister since his father Pierre and why separatism is again on the rise in Alberta.

McConaghy is too diplomatic in his polite descriptions of the degradation of Canada's economic leadership under Trudeau. Junior Trudeau is a corrupt, incompetent, insincere, incoherent economic wrecking ball in funky socks, who is about to win another majority mandate from an utterly complacent Central Canadian electorate.

The economic price for Trudeau's folly, which Alberta and Saskatchewan have been feeling for six years, will be massive for the rest of Canada. Sadly, most Canadians won't understand that until after the next election, when it's too late. Read this book and weep for Canada.

[Mike Parkes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent summary of the recent history of pipeline politics and policy in the Canadian energy sector, and the difficult choices that need to be made in trying to square the circle of developing a progressive climate policy with Canada's heavy economic dependence on exporting fossil fuels. I didn't agree with all of the author's policy suggestions, but still found a lot of value in this book.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Some insightful information about the industry

[Steve Mallett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full marks, finally somebody unafraid to telling the truth.