Aaron Gunn wants a national energy program. He’d never describe it that way, of course, but the MP for North Island-Powell River is just the latest in a long line of Conservative politicians to unintentionally argue for the revival of Pierre Trudeau’s signature energy policy. With gas prices spiking above $2 per litre in his province, Gunn tried to blame the Liberal government for its apparent failure to inoculate the country from the consequences of Donald Trump’s decision to blow up global energy markets. 

“Pipelines should have been built 10 years ago,” he wrote on social media. “Refineries should have been built 10 years ago. We should have an energy policy that puts Canada, and Canadians, first. This is ridiculous.”

He’s right about that last part, but not in the way he intended. Canada could have built every pipeline on the proverbial drawing board since 2015, from Northern Gateway and Keystone XL to Energy East, and voters in his riding would still be paying $2 per litre for their gasoline. That’s because oil, and the products that are refined from it, are traded on a global market and priced accordingly. It’s the reason why, despite all the oil being drilled and refined in the United States (the world’s biggest oil producer), gasoline prices are spiking there as well. 

Energy analysts have suggested that the current crisis, which has removed almost 10 million barrels per day of oil supply from global markets, is worse than any we’ve seen since the 1970s. That, of course, was the crisis that precipitated the dreaded National Energy Program, a set of policy measures that tried to insulate Canada from soaring global oil and gasoline prices. As then-finance minister Allan MacEachen explained in the 1980 budget that introduced the NEP, it sought to increase domestic energy security, reduce the cost of gasoline and diesel for Canadians and stimulate investment in new areas like the oil sands, all with the eventual goal of “ultimate independence from the world oil market.”

Conservatives of the day lost their minds over it, of course, and blamed it for the economic impacts of the global recession (and oil price crash) that soon followed. Subsequent generations of Conservative leaders, especially the ones in Alberta, have been dining out on that spurious correlation for decades, even as they argue for policies that sound an awful lot like the ones Pierre Trudeau’s government introduced in 1980. 

Mark Carney should give them what they want. No, he shouldn’t force the private sector to build more refineries and domestic pipelines, and I am still very dubious about the economic prospects of a new West Coast pipeline and the barrels needed to fill it. But now might be the perfect moment for a new National Energy Program, even if no sane politician would ever actually describe it that way. 

A key part of that national policy is the federal government’s forthcoming electricity strategy, which will help connect Canada’s balkanized electricity grids and enable the construction of more transmission infrastructure. So too, I suppose, is the memorandum of understanding with Alberta, one that could breathe new life into the industrial carbon tax — and yes, theoretically, the prospects of a new West Coast pipeline.

But Carney can, and should, go further here. He should restore — and increase — the federal government’s incentive program for home solar electricity systems, which would help shield Canadians from the rising price of gasoline (as well as gas-fired electricity and maybe even heating oil). He should work with provincial governments and regulators on enabling bidirectional EV charging, which would make EVs more economically attractive and improve grid resilience. And he should treat energy efficiency like it’s a true national priority, one that delivers the same sort of economic and nation-building benefits as any pipeline or critical minerals project. 

Most controversially, he should expand the federal government’s excess profits tax, which currently applies to banks and life insurers, and apply it to the oil and gas industry. Those companies are about to realize a multi-billion dollar windfall that has nothing to do with their prudence or wisdom, and it’s coming at the direct expense of Canadian consumers and businesses. The proceeds of an expanded excess profits tax could be used to cut income taxes or provide direct rebates to Canadians. 

Yes, there would be the predictable whinging and victimhood from Conservative politicians and columnists in Alberta. But Canadians, more broadly, have been very supportive of the idea of an excess profits tax on oil and gas companies. In a 2024 Leger survey when people were asked whether Canada should introduce a tax on these profits, as countries like the United Kingdom already had, 62 per cent agreed. Only 21 per cent opposed the idea, with the remaining 17 per cent saying they didn’t know. 

Maybe Carney doesn’t want to touch that particular political stove right now, given the wind it would put in the sails of Alberta’s separatists just months before a potential referendum. Maybe he doesn’t want to salt the political earth for the Liberal Party of Canada just as some green shoots are starting to break through. And maybe new NDP leader Avi Lewis will make the case for an excess profits tax in Parliament — he already made it on the campaign trail — before Carney gets the chance to do it himself.

Either way, the moment is right for some sort of national energy program, one that fulfills the core objectives of the first one: security, opportunity and fairness. The same Conservatives who have spent the last few years unwittingly arguing for a restoration of the Trudeau-era NEP would surely oppose the creation of a new one. They ought to be reminded of the irony there — and the hypocrisy. 

© National Observer