Energy is clearly one of the top issues facing the NWT. It’s too expensive, too elusive and too dirty.
Last week’s announcement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that his government was pausing the carbon tax on home heating oil now guarantees the issue will be front and centre when the legislative assembly resumes after the election. Unless, that is, MLAs decide not to reverse legislation Ottawa pressured them to pass earlier this year requiring the territory to impose a carbon tax on home heating fuel.
The prime minister’s flip-flop takes a chisel to the dam holding reality at bay from the rhetoric around his government’s sacred carbon tax regime. It’s an admission, indirectly though that was, that there is at least a perception that the tax is driving people into the poorhouse, most notably, the Atlantic Canadian voters he needs to support his government if his party is going to have any chance of surviving the next federal election.
The Bank of Canada is nixing the notion that carbon taxes are a major driver of inflation. Its president, Tiff Macklem, says the carbon tax represent about a 0.15 per cent increase to the rate of inflation each year. But his assurances do little to dispel the observation, particularly in the North, that life has become expensive very fast, even more than what we’re accustomed to, while the federal government is endlessly adding burdens that make life even more expensive, with little payoff.
NWT residents enjoy some of the most crushing heating bills in the country, of course, so a carbon tax on heat is like a bee sting on a shark bite. We still notice the sting, but it is largely immaterial to the gaping, bleeding wound draining our life’s blood away.
Now that politics have pierced the once seemingly immutable virtuousness of the Liberals’ carbon tax project, other climbdowns are sure to follow.
Take the mandatory requirement for auto dealers to phase out the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging Canadians to drive electric vehicles. They make total sense in large urban areas with lots of charging stations and greater hydro capacity.
But there is a reason why the territorial government itself thinks electric vehicle sales in the North could be as low as 2.9 per cent of the overall volume by that mandated date despite the Trudeau ban.
If electric automakers could make a vehicle that could be sold for $30,000, will last 20 years and get you to Edmonton and back without stranding you on the side of Highway 1 during a forest fire, that will surely mark the end of the age of the internal combustion motor.
But we haven’t reached that point yet and no amount of sanctimonious bloviating will get us there. We need realistic timelines and national policy that reflects the regional challenges, particularly for the North where charging infrastructure is minimal and energy costs far exceed what the average Canadian experiences.
While MLAs were debating the need to impose home heating fuel earlier this year, NWT MP Michael McLeod told NNSL Media the biggest challenge was to convince people to give up oil. I think the biggest challenge is producing an inexpensive and reliable alternative source of energy.
We have not met that challenge yet, no matter how many solar arrays, wood pellet mills and wind turbines we build. Currently, without fossil fuels we cannot deliver groceries, nor send remote community residents to hospital or to university.
This is the challenge and no amount of wishful thinking will make it go away.
It’s up to the government — and private enterprise — to create the conditions that will allow us to truly become less dependent on oil. In the meantime, we need to keep the cost of fuel in the North as low as possible so we can give our bank accounts room to invest in more renewables that must also be affordable.
Pushing the territory and its residents off a cliff to serve an idealistic aim will only make it more likely the territory will fail to meet that aim, while making us poorer for it.