The Ranks of Crony Capitalists Grows As Companies Trade Political Support — And Their Integrity — For Unattainable “Peace For Our Time With Enviro-activists And Liberal Politicians”
Commentary by
Dave Harbour
Here we bring you more news of eroding prosperity and freedom in Canada: increasing ‘carbon’ taxes that further the decline of business voters in Canada.
But while liberal politicians may be foolish enough to bargain away their children’s prosperity, they are also crafty. Higher energy taxes may provide a quick economic fix to Alberta’s overspending government at the expense of future energy investment. But it also keeps a liberal supporting bureaucracy and entitlement system more or less whole at the expense of the more conservative private sector. (It is the same thing Alaska’s Administration is trying to do across the border, as Alaska’s largest city ignores the State’s fiscal crisis and moves to increase its costs as well.)
We commented on this trend of growing socialism at the expense of the free market a few days ago. The trend is not unique to Canada, but is rampant under the current U.S. administration and a fait accompli in much of Europe — a union of tragic, social and economic failures.
(Financial Post by Claudia Canttaneo. A new hard cap on greenhouse gas emissions in the oilsands won’t impact Cenovus Energy Inc.’s growth plans, president and CEO Brian Ferguson said Thursday…. {More})
Then, adding insult to injury, some energy companies are piously proffering public pronouncements of support: pretext to their own decline. Don’t Cenovus Energy and Suncor Energy realize they are aiding and abetting the forces dedicated to their demise — like their cousins did at the recent, Paris Climate Change meetings? Is their head over heals desire to solicit the favor of their regulators and enviro-activist gadflies so desperate that they would appease them with their own diminished dowries? And, do they not realize that no amount of obsequious corporate policy will ever appease the enviro-activists and liberal authoritarians whose ultimate goal is the accumulation of political power and absolute control over the means of production, transportation and distribution of energy, etc.?
Did millennials now apparently directing corporate communication policies never hear of Neville Chamberlain? Do today’s corporate leaders forget that the dream of peace through appeasement ‘for our time’ merely delays war and conquest to a future time? -dh
Wall Street Journal by Chester Dawson. The government of oil-rich Alberta province introduced legislation Tuesday to implement an economy wide carbon tax starting next year, aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions and remaking its image as a champion of the fossil fuels industry. The move is part of a broader environmental policy package expected to phase out coal-fired plants…. (More) (Note: We have shown that certain oil and gas interests support the climate change agenda as long as it is protects their own natural gas/LNG marketing effort, as long as taxes don’t specifically target them and as long as the “war on coal” is the major target that can become a vanishing competitor. -dh
Alberta’s consumers are hearing that the province’s new carbon tax will dramatically impact family budgets.
In this video, Canadian Natural Resources’ Murray Edwards joins the enviro-governmental-industrial cabal by supporting the fossil fuel tax. -dh
Here, Suncor’s CEO provides a litany of enviro-talking points supporting imposition of a carbon tax, which is FINE as long as it is broad based and not targeting just the oil industry.
We hope our friends in Canada are wiser than most of the failing European economies that would rather be consumed by overspending, overtaxing, unsustainable government budgets, a flood of culture killing immigration and political correctness than call “appeasement” what it is: cowardice leading to the weakening of free societies. -dh
Leave A Comment