I’m growing tired of listening to adults complaining about “affordability issues”, especially when they won’t ask, “Why are these things even causing me grief?” In the 2025 federal election every political party chose the word “affordability” as a “theme” that could address our personal financing issue such as being unable to pay the bills, put food on the table or pay the rent – and FAILED to deliver. Now, 12 months later, the price of gas hovers at $2.00 per liter due to an unnecessary war started in Iran, and now the Conservatives are rephrasing their criticism of our federal government by substituting Mark Carney’s name for former scapegoat Justin Trudeau as the “cause”.
Can we get serious for a change?
The PM has two economics-related political issues on his hands that Trudeau could not handle: U.S. President Donald Trump threatening our sovereignty and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s leadership being threatened by Alberta separatists actually supported by members of her own UCP caucus, and now being well funded by American MAGA extremists. For Carney, dealing with Trump is “easy”; ignore his mood swings while trying to keep Canadians united while seeking alternative export markets to loosen the U.S.A.’s economic grip on us. However, Smith’s claiming to be a member of Team Canada is just a bad joke awaiting a better punchline.
Neither Trump nor Smith would ever concede that climate change events are creating our affordability issues, especially when it comes to our rapidly escalating food costs; however, for the next week Canadians will again be focused on Carney and Smith as they implement and sign an industrial carbon pricing agreement to $130 per tonne by 2040 IF Carney would take steps to begin fast-tracking major resource extraction projects allegedly being “delayed by unrealistic environmental risk studies.”
Carney’s reputation for wanting to see Canada lessen our atmospheric carbon gas emissions will take a beating as the public will see the signing of such an agreement as ceding to the demands of a “Take Back Alberta” fringe, but IF the UCP does pass this agreement into law, he’s actually bartered a better deal with Alberta than Trudeau was offering with his $190 per metric tonne proposal to be imposed in 2030, because it now removes the “exceptions” Trudeau was prepared to allow industries in getting their own emission issues under control.
However, having obtained such a compromise, isn’t it about time we got back on track and turn our attention towards the “new” affordability issue of surging gas prices that was created when Netanyahu and Trump started their “war” with Iran, now kicking in at $1.99 per liter in Canada and $7.40 U.S. per gallon in California ($2.70/l Cdn)?
Having been warned by their lab research technicians in 1984 that there existed causal linkage to atmospheric warming created by carbon gas emissions, Exxon reorganized its research facilities to include studying alternative sources for providing energy, including wind, and its shareholders didn’t complain, nor today does the state of Texas. So, here’s the “question”: What is wrong with the rest of us making a similar declaration on fossil fuel emissions, while FINALLY acknowledging that we have ALL become carbon fuel addicts?
Once our children become our governors, they’re going to have a lot more to say about our unwillingness to recognize our addictive tendencies. Even now, a majority of Canadians are foolishly demanding governments to ease taxes at the pump during this period of high gas prices. Why do this when we already know that the current price of gas isn’t going to drop back to Jan. 1 levels? Since this “war” began on Feb. 28 almost 80 refineries world-wide have been damaged by bombing, and require close to five years before returning to original capacity. As well, almost 2,000 tankers subjected to massive insurance price hikes must be allowed to pass from the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran is contemplating adding a “toll” of millions per vessel as a condition for the conflict to end.
During our time when Canadians were less obtuse in trying to deal with climate change, I can remember how the Saskatchewan Party reacted when a relatively “new” political face, Avi Lewis, and his partner Naomi Kline presented the “LEAP Manifesto” to the federal NDP convention in Edmonton in 2016. This was merely an academic treatise exploring what might occur should society start the process of weaning itself off our fossil fuel addiction, and cease extracting these resources at the extreme levels industry was now pursuing. Convention delegates agreed to study the implications of LEAP over the next year, and that should have been the end of the discussion. Instead, our governing cabal reigned ridicule upon the provincial NDP caucus that would potentially “stand in support of this harebrained scheme” that threatened to lessen royalty revenues to the province.
Now, however, Avi Lewis is the official Leader of that same federal New Democratic Party, and this Sunday he will be attending a “Meet and Greet” session at the Spice Trail on Second Avenue, West, starting at 11 a.m. and going until 2 p.m., and as a teacher being first and foremost my chosen calling in life, I seriously believe that our future rulers, our teenagers and young adults should be attending that event, just to get a better idea as to WHY Mr. Lewis chose the topic of oil curtailment for the LEAP thesis, and form their own opinion as to the suggestion that right NOW is the time to switch our priorities towards applying “green technology” solutions in order to put our oil addiction issues into withdrawal mode.
In advocating for such a decision to be made by our future adult population, I am fully aware that some Saskatchewan Party supporters still want the public to believe that climate change and global warming issues are a “hoax”, and that as a member of the local federal component of the NDP Executive, I am clandestinely trying to “indoctrinate our children with dangerous socialist thoughts and actions” – which might on the surface seem “fair”, but is more a result of the Saskatchewan Party actually fearing this new federal leader who isn’t merely pursuing a seat in Parliament but is instead making a concerted effort for Canadians to understand him and make up their own minds as to the direction a party under his leadership might move, and then make their voices heard at the ballot box.
Ken MacDougall is a retired teacher and former election candidate for the federal NDP.
