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Lorne Gunter: Seeing ulterior motives in Carney's Canada Strong Fund

The fund’s official aim is to invest in “clean and conventional energy, critical minerals, agriculture, and infrastructure.”

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On Monday, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced his government would be setting up a sovereign wealth fund — the Canada Strong Fund. It’s a false front.

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As I wrote that day, a country cannot have a sovereign wealth fund unless it has sovereign wealth. Canada doesn’t. After a decade in which the Liberals more than doubled the nation’s debt to $1.4 trillion, truth in marketing would require Carney to call it a sovereign debt fund because the government’s $25-billion contribution will be underwritten by borrowed money.

There’s more of a chance the Canada Strong Fund will add to the national debt than reduce it.

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But is the fund also a National Energy Program 2.0 masquerading as “nation-building” project?

The day after Carney created Canada Strong, his government sent a delegation to Colombia. There Canada’s representatives met with representatives from 60 countries (including Brazil and Germany but excluding the U.S.) to devise financial instruments that would “phase out” fossil fuels.

It’s not out of line to worry that the Canada Strong Fund will be structured deliberately as Canada’s instrument for shutting down fossil fuel production.

Remember, before he became PM, Carney was a “green” devotee. He was a financial adviser on UN environmental projects, he headed an initiative to have banks and investment houses worldwide commit to ending their investment in the conventional oil and gas industry. And he was a “Keep it in the Grounder,” arguing that at least 50 per cent of Canada’s oil and gas reserves and 75 per cent of its coal must remain unextracted.

As outlined in the official bumph put out by the Liberals at the time of the Canada Strong Fund announcement, the fund’s official aim is to invest in “clean and conventional energy, critical minerals, agriculture, and infrastructure.”

“Clean” energy? OK, not directly threatening to Alberta and the West, but very threatening to taxpayers. Most “green” energy projects get moving only after governments at one level or another have pumped in billions in “investments.” They die when the subsidies end.

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“Conventional energy?” Sure, that sounds pretty good, until you remember that Carney has already said that energy megaprojects will have to pay an industrial carbon price six times that of the current industry.

That amount makes most oil projects financially unfeasible. As such, it is an indirect ban (or limit) on oil development.

There’s a good chance, too, that the Pathway Alliance — the massive carbon capture network co-funded by major oilsands companies — is not truly about growing the oil industry, as the Alberta government has swallowed, but is really a masked Liberal effort to reduce glare from the deliberate federal sunset of the sector.

“Critical minerals?” Sounds harmless enough. And there is no doubt Canada should concentrate on expanding its mining of critical minerals. There will be a strong market for them for decades. And since they are critical for national security, increasing our production will improve our independence.

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But the biggest use for critical minerals at the moment is zero-emissions industrial applications, such as electric vehicles. Pushing critical minerals also fits an enviro-industrial strategy to replace the oil industry.

The biggest reason I can’t say for sure that the Canada Strong Fund is part of a careful oil-killing strategy is that unlike the original National Energy Program in the 1980s, this one’s major goal is not (yet) to steal money from Alberta in the name of national unity.

However, it’s not far fetched to imagine the Carney government seeking to fill its Canada Strong Fund with a special petroleum tax (like an enhanced industrial carbon tax), all in the name of nation-building.

Of the 24 members of Carney’s economic advisory committee, only one is from Alberta and only five from the West.

I know all this will sound far-fetched to some readers, but the Liberals have made Western alienation worse so many times it’s almost become cliché.

lgunter@postmedia.com

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