When The Lights Go Out For Canada

Canada's Energy Sector Is Being Punished for Keeping the Lights On
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Imagine waking up in the dead of winter with rationed heat, power, and fuel for transport.

That’s the world we’re flirting with — while demonizing the very sector that ensures it never happens.

Canada’s energy sector is fighting two wars: one against global volatility, and another at home — against its own regulators and cultural climate.

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A Global Energy Crisis Is Brewing

Around the world, energy is being reweaponized.

From Russia’s stranglehold on European gas, to the U.S. targeting members of OPEC+ with sanctions, to China cornering the market on solar and battery materials — the message is clear: energy is power, in every sense of the word.

And yet Canada — a country with some of the world’s largest oil, gas and uranium reserves — acts as if it’s ashamed of them.

The Hero vs. Society Conflict: Our Own Worst Enemy

Energy producers in Canada are the hero in a hostile system. They:

• Fund public services through massive royalties and taxes
• Create high-paying, skilled jobs in rural and Indigenous communities
• Offer some of the world’s cleanest fossil fuel production — with aggressive decarbonization and methane mitigation targets

But instead of being celebrated, they’re targeted — by Bill C-69, regulatory gridlock, pipeline kill-switches, and an ever-moving goalpost of ESG mandates.

This isn’t just bureaucracy. It’s systemic resistance to production.

We’ve Confused Climate Goals With Economic Self-Harm

Canada makes up less than 2% of global emissions. Yet we act as though punishing our domestic energy sector will stop climate change — while importing oil from countries with abysmal human rights and environmental records.

We tax our producers more. We delay projects longer than any other nation. We regulate with a heavier hand. And then we wonder why global capital flows elsewhere.

This is madness.

And it’s hurting our competitiveness at the exact moment energy security is becoming the premier geopolitical issue.

The Dream and the Nightmare

• Dream: Canada becomes a clean energy superpower — responsibly extracting and exporting LNG, oil, uranium, and critical minerals to a world that needs them.
• Nightmare: Our producers are choked into submission. Projects die on the desk. Investment dries up. And we import what we refuse to build.

We are not yet in the nightmare. But we’re getting close.

Where the Path Changes

There’s still time to change the story — and the energy sector needs to take control of the narrative.

This means:

• Reframing energy as the enabler of everything — from heat to hospitals to hydrogen.
• Pushing policymakers to choose realism over ideology. Net zero doesn’t happen without steel, copper, diesel, and gas.
• Reminding Canadians that prosperity doesn’t happen by accident. It’s built — by risk-takers, engineers, and producers, all fueled by our natural resources.

Canada's Moment for Courage

If Canada wants to matter in the 21st century — to feed, fuel, and finance the world — we need a political and cultural shift. One that stops punishing the industries that built this country.

Because one day soon, we’ll wake up in that winter storm. And the only question that will matter is: Do the lights and heat turn on?