It's Just An Economy

How are Carney’s Brookfield stocks doing?:

Canadian manufacturers are already losing U.S. orders as businesses brace for President Donald Trump's latest tariff threats, even as the Gordie Howe International Bridge prepares to open Monday.

William Pellerin, an international trade lawyer, told Global News on Saturday that some Canadian companies report already feeling the effects of Trump's proposed 50 per cent tariff before takes effect Aug. 19.

"We're already speaking with a large number of clients who, because of this tariff threat of 50 per cent that would come into force next month, are already losing massive orders to their U.S. customers," Pellerin said.

Trump threatened the tariffs on certain Canadian goods last Sunday, along with another 10 per cent tariff affecting goods outside the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement.

Pellerin said the proposed 50 per cent tariff would make many Canadian products too expensive to compete in the U.S., particularly in sectors such as furniture and electronics.

"A 50 per cent tariff really makes those Canadian businesses uncompetitive in the United States," he said.

He said the uncertainty alone is already affecting employers, with U.S. buyers pulling back over concerns they could soon face significantly higher costs.

"We've already seen some layoffs by Canadian manufacturers just because of that threat," Pellerin said.

 

No, this isn’t Trump’s fault.

This is the fault of the Liberals and their voters who think that ant-Americanism is a brilliant economic strategy.

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LCBO tariffs his BC wine at 71% - he says Trump is a lot better at only 50% ...... this interprovincial trade barrier talk is all a lot of hooey, it's not changing...... https://t.co/VTCUnL4O0p

— Ross McLean (@McLeanChronicle) July 23, 2026

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CHART OF THE DAY. To my American followers, see this below. I bet most of you did not know that Canada printed more money than any other G7 nation by a country mile since 2020 Covid.

The fact that anyone is buying our bonds and giving them such a low yield is astounding… https://t.co/VqpQXct8pK

— Martin Pelletier (@MPelletierCIO) July 23, 2026

 

Canada sits on the third largest petroleum reserve on the planet.

But we can never make a living off of it:

Computer science and artificial intelligence pioneer John McCarthy famously said that, “he who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.”

He meant that when dealing with complex systems, decisions must be based on hard numbers and data, as opposed to ideology and emotion.

That explains how Canadian energy policy became a train wreck under the Justin Trudeau Liberals, starting in 2015 when they took power.

They subjected Canadians to a decade of propaganda about how the age of fossil fuels was ending, supported by government-subsidized environmental lobbyists, while a succession of Liberal environment ministers spouted absolute nonsense about how Canada was coming ever closer to achieving its farcical greenhouse gas emission reduction targets.

They refused to do arithmetic, were doomed to talk nonsense, and subjected Canadian taxpayers to the consequences.

A report by the Fraser Institute released this week based on the latest government data demonstrates just how much nonsense there was.

It notes that between 1995 and 2024, despite earmarking more than $200-billion of federal taxpayers’ dollars to reduce Canada’s use of fossil fuels, they accounted for 76.3% of Canada’s domestic energy consumption in 2024, essentially the same as the 76.8% recorded almost three decades ago, in 1995.

In terms of Canadian energy production, fossil fuels accounted for 88% of the total in 2024, up from 83.3% almost a quarter century ago in 2000.

As for the endless Liberal hype about how wind and solar power are growing by leaps and bounds when it comes to energy production, in 2024 they accounted for 0.8% of total energy production compared to 88% for fossil fuels, 5.1% for hydro, 3.9% for nuclear and 2.2% for biofuels.

In Canada’s three largest energy-consuming sectors of the economy — transportation, industry and residential construction — fossil fuels in 2024 supplied 98.7% of the energy consumed by the transportation sector, 74% by the industrial sector and 50.6% by the residential sector.

Every Canadian province relies on fossil fuels for most of its energy needs — 89.7% in Alberta; 84.1% in Saskatchewan; 78.7% in Ontario; 76.2% in B.C.; 73.7% in Nova Scotia; 72.6% in Manitoba; 69.6% in P.E.I.; 66.4% in Newfoundland and Labrador; 61.1% in New Brunswick and 54.6% in Quebec.

It’s also vital to the rest of Canada that Alberta remains a part of Confederation, since it contributes 70.2% of Canada’s total energy production, according to the Fraser Institute study.

Just three provinces, Alberta (70.2%), British Columbia (15.8%) and Saskatchewan (5.1%) produce 91.1% of Canada’s energy. No other provinces comes anywhere close to those numbers.

As Kenneth Greene, co-author of the Fraser Institute study, “Energy Facts — Canada Edition” noted:

“There is a lot of misunderstandings about the reality of energy production and consumption in Canada today, which is still heavily dependent on fossil fuels and will be for many years to come.”

It’s significant that at long last Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney, has dismantled some, but not all, of Trudeau’s economy-killing restrictions on energy production in Canada after a decade of utter stupidity in policy making.

That’s assuming he actually believes in building new pipelines and fast-tracking new energy infrastructure “at speeds not seen in generations,” despite his pre-political life as the world’s leading corporate spokesman for higher carbon taxes.

Had Canada had a wiser government over the past decade, as opposed to one that refused to do arithmetic and was thus doomed to talk nonsense, things could have been different today.

We could, for example, be exporting our vast natural gas resources to global markets today beyond the current trickle, enabling other countries to replace their coal-fired electricity with cleaner burning natural gas — the single most effective thing we could be doing to help lower global greenhouse gas emissions, while simultaneously boosting our economy.