CGE LEADERSHIP SERIES Spring 2025 // Canadian Government Executive / 27 ing to happen regardless of whether it’s produced in Canada or elsewhere. Canada’s also one of the lowest cost LNG in terms of emissions. But if you’re going to massively ramp up things like natural gas exports, which I think we need to do, you cannot do that by just saying we’ll rely on markets to navigate through the existing environmental uncertainty regimes.We have a law, C-69. You cannot do it with a cap on emissions that counts all the exports the same way as accounts of production. So that is a hard, hard choice. Are you going to on energy deliberately take advantage of this or not? And we saw in the polling, climate change, even among Liberal voters, was at 2% in terms of what they were driving in terms of their vote. This is a super hard choice for the Prime Minister himself, because I know how deeply he believes in climate change issues and the need to address them and use market mechanisms. But for Canada right now, my question would be, what are even the medium-term sources of economic growth that we’re going to drive? In terms of carrots for the U.S., we can offer things like natural resources and critical minerals. So are we willing to suspend the current operating rules on environmental assessments to radically accelerate the production of projects of critical importance? Historically, this is doable. The major natural gas grid that comes to Ontario from Alberta was built in two years in the 1960s. This is not technologically impossible. We have created a regulatory environment where the uncertainty is so high and the build costs are so high that no one will go in, and that’s what the energy sector is saying. This is an example of where there needs to be real truth to power. Not around the things that sound good that we need to do, like, internal trade barriers and trade diversification. But the hard things where you’re going to actually have to face trade-offs where not everything’s possible. Marta Morgan I don’t have much to add to that because I think that’s, that’s really at the heart of it. Here’s two things. One is, for the public service, it’s time to bring to the fore the other things that matter, the things that haven’t played a strong role in the campaign platform. What does the innovation economy look like for Canada? The early wins and the low hanging fruit is still in the natural resources sector. But, what are the areas where maybe they haven’t received the attention? Are there kind of changes to the way Canada needs to kind of do business in terms of our own policy orthodoxy? We’ve seen an evolution on how we think about investment, about procurement, about where pension funds should be investing. Are there ways in which we need to adjust the way that we’ve seen our, our own economic interest now that we are being overtly threatened by the United States? The second thing is just building on what Graham said, it’s a solutions-oriented approach to procurement to regulatory streamlining, etc. It’s the public service that really understands these processes. The processes that we have in place are so slow, so cumbersome - need I say so bureaucratic - how can we in this moment of crisis find ways to streamline, to prepare, to take more risk? The political side is not going to come up with those answers. They’re going to say, we need to do this but it’s going to be the public service that’s going to have to tell them how. Kevin Page As Lori outlined, I think the three different dimensions are going to bring an enormous amount of uncertainty to our lives and our ability to deal with policy challenges. I think it’s quite possible that we’ll also have to deal with some version of a significant economic recession. And just to add that to the mix but I just I cannot see the path that President Trump is on with respect to this global trade war ending well. As Mr. Carney wrote in his book, Value and Values, probably high on his list in terms of making decisions would be the unity of the country. There’ll be a lot of trade-offs that will have to be made that may surprise people. You could start to see that he was making them even during the campaign. I think that there even in the platform, things like, you know, carbon taxes, which I’m a proponent, I think is the right solution. It’s just not going to happen in this environment. Graham talked about energy but I think unity has to be above all. As Nancy Pelosi once said, you got to find advantage in any situation and no matter how dark it is. So, strengthen the country, whether it’s to interprovincial trade barriers, but it’s kind of how we need do it. I was heartened to see this Team Canada approach meeting with the premiers. There was a lot of that in the late 1980s, early 1990s. And we of sort of gotten away from that. And with First Nations people rebuilding that kind of governance in a way that just brings the country together. I think we need that, and I think the public service will be part of that. I think Mr. Carney’s kind of already told people where he thinks the extra growth is going to come from. Like if you listen to his podcast, his book, he says three things. He thinks biotechnology is going to be a big growth potential. And he thinks it will be carbon and it’ll be energy. It’ll be conventional energy but it energy with less carbon in it. I think really keeping the country strong, rebuilding that kind of governance, whether it’s through intervention or trade barriers, building like international trade, but always doing it as a country, bringing us together, I think we’re going to see that. Graham Flack Can I just come in the unity point? Because I’m actually a lot more optimistic on this one. I think the table is set because of the external threat for a broadly supported national unity like we’ve never seen before. The potential outliers are Alberta and Saskatchewan, but they are potential outliers. If a government were to take a decision that it was going to continue to shut down export potential for those assets I think Mark is a unique figure in that his credibility is so strong in the climate change issues that he is ‘Nixon going to China’ moment in terms of I agree, we have to get our GHG track down. But these emissions are different because they’re displacing other emissions globally. And we are going to facilitate this export of the resource. I think he can do that in a way that’s harder for any other leader of any party to do or easier than any other leader of any party, because he has credibility on his climate change commitment, but also realism about the economic situation. If you navigate through that, I think you’re in as positive a national unity environment as we’ve had in a long while. If that isn’t successfully navigated that where I think the brake raises. If you add on to that a deal on interprovincial trade barriers, which will be less than we all hope, but more than we could have accomplished in the past. I think you have a very positive energy environment, but I think he’s uniquely positioned to drive this. So to me, the execution on this is going to be key. Lori Turnbull We are just about out of time. I am going to thank everybody so much for coming for both sessions. But I just wanted to say thank you so much to our three panelists. This has been awesome.
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