Our old entrepreneurial fight appears to have given way to our new spirit of resignation.  We fumbled our way through a half-baked Olympic plebiscite choosing to forego the opportunity to host the world whilst literally kissing goodbye billions of dollars in leverage to lift us out of our malaise with absolutely no Plan B in the cue. Offices sit empty. Pipelines stall. Politicians dither. Taxes rise. Morale plummets. And for those who areworking, their titles, like their days, are getting longer; their tempers, like their nights, are getting shorter, as more responsibilities are foisted upon them with fewer people around to help.  We wrote about this two years ago in our post, The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves.  It looks like the beatings will continue a little bit longer.

Ah, but only a little bit longer. And this is where the story gets good because this is where other people start telling it.

You see, I’m actually quite optimistic about where we’re headed.  Why?  Because, though barely perceptible, things are changing. The tsunami that hits shore is caused long before by the quake deep underground, miles out at sea. And the quake in this case is the steadily changing narrative. The coalescing of opinion into something coherent.  The polite, quiet, Canadian majority are beginning to speak out, stand up and they are changing the narrative one post, one speech, one tweet at a time.  In short, they are complaining about the food.

The rhetoric is running headlong into the reality and the reality is that a majority of Canadians – not just Albertans – are feeling the pinch in the pocket book; the realization that we actually need our resource industry. A majority of Canadians even think our pipeline capacity situation is a crisis. A majority of Canadians, I would surmise, have seen their mutual funds and investment portfolios, likely heavily invested in Canadian oil and gas equities, decline as the righteous talk of sunny ways is stripped bare and gives way to the reality that the entire country risks sliding into obscurity, or worse, if we don’t figure out how to get out of our own way; how to sell a product that we make better, cleaner and safer than any other country on earth that everyone consumes.  The entire Canadian economy is at risk and though Albertans – the canaries in the British Columbia style coal mine – are absolutely alive to the issue, the rest of the country is slowly catching up.

And this is where the waves of the changing narrative start to reach the shoreline. Here are but a few recent examples:

• The Calgary Flames recently branded Saddledome ice with what absolutely shouldn’t be, but apparently these days is, a bold imprint that says “I Love Canadian Oil and Gas” for all North America to see on their TVs as the Flames make their run for the Cup in the months ahead.
• CIBC stepped up and cancelled the energy portion of its investment conference in Whistler after the mayor there suggested that oil companies should pay for climate change citing the devasting effect on the 3,000,000 tourists who fly and drive to Whistler each year.
• Suzanne Anton, former attorney General and Minister of Justice for British Columbia wrote this piece last March about foreign money bankrolling anti-energy activists in Canada.

Because we can’t reach overseas markets, our landlocked oil is sold at a huge discount to customers in the U.S. Scotiabank economists estimate that the current cost to the Canadian economy is $15.6 billion a year. We may as well write a cheque today “to our friends in the U.S.” for $43 million. And do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day after that. What an incredible campaign. No less oil consumed, but the Canadian economy suffers massive losses.”

• Steve Larke and Adam Le Dain wrote this absolutely brilliant piece entitled We Have Met the Carbon Enemy and He Is Us which I am imploring you to read and send to everyone you know.

Sadly, for Canada, our collective response to this astounding global opportunity appears to be self-flagellation, continuous delay and an ever-increasing regulatory burden, rather than building great, well-thought-out projects, of which Canada could have many. It is no wonder the world’s energy investors are uniformly looking elsewhere – and will continue to.”

• Chris Slubicki, responsible for coaching countless young ski racers (including mine) and current CEO of Modern Resources, gave this superb speech which, as the kids say, has gone viral with over 100,000 views since he published it last fall. Watch out Instagram world record egg…Coach Chris is coming for you!
• Ron Ghitter, former Progressive Conservative MLA and Senator, and someone I’m fortunate to call a friend and mentor, wrote this spot-on Op-Ed articulating the frustration of so many in these parts.

"We are a forgotten appendage in the Canadian mosaic.”

• My literary hero, Rex Murphy, delivered this 28-minute dose of reality about the fundamental importance of having a job and why that matters. I urge you all to delay your next Netflix binge and watch this  As he said near the end:

This is an industry that provides employment.  Do you know what it’s like NOT to have work?  There’s no psychological stress greater other than the loss of a loved one or the breakup of a family.  There is nothing so damaging to a domestic arrangement than the loss of dignity that comes with the fact that you can no longer claim you are earning or your own and providing for your own.  A job is a core of dignity.”

Finally, in the best piece I have yet to read that captures the mood of my beloved city, we turn to Rex yet again.  In this well written and reasoned article he asks all the right questions. I dare say, he asks, in his own eloquent and nuanced way, is it not possible to have both a hot cooked meal and one that tastes good, too?

I would be asking of them: Why Us? Why, only us? Are there no other pipelines in the world? Are there no other oil economies? Are there not huge projects elsewhere to claim their self-aggrandizing attentions, projects of far more scale and far less regulated that the one in their own country – that supplied such relief to Canadians in terms or jobs, and to the national economy in that invisible pipeline that brought the equalization dollars from Calgary and Edmonton to Ottawa, Montreal and beyond?

I’d be asking why the production of oil, as opposed to the use of it – and it is used in everything by everybody, every other industry, every other product, all of our current civilization – why production is demonized by its (mainly) fanatic opponents?

How can something be so bad to produce which everyone uses and chooses to delightfully use? That’s the paradox of the whole green movement there, and Calgarians must find that paradox wholly exasperating.”

Rex, that is de-licious. And, yes, we do.

See, it’s not enough to just stare at the creamed corn and choke it down, as would appear to be the strategy of our federal leaders. There absolutely is a point in telling everyone the food sucks. It actually is helpful. It is going to change things. And I absolutely do want to hear you complain about the food.

Understood?

Regards,

Adam