U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory has thrown Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s green energy and climate change policies into chaos, because of the Liberal government’s failure to understand the importance of harmonizing Canada’s energy policies with those of the U.S.

By contrast, former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper understood that Canada could not afford to move independently of the U.S., its largest trading partner, on issues such as carbon taxation because it would endanger hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs dependent on Canada’s energy sector.

That’s why Harper ran on bringing in a cap and trade system (another form of a carbon tax) in the 2008 federal election when it looked like then U.S. president Barack Obama was going to succeed in having Congress approve cap and trade in the U.S.

When that fell through, however, Harper........

© Edmonton Sun