Oh Canada!
The Revolution Devours Its Children: When Purity Turns to Persecution, No One is Safe
Revolutions are, by nature, ideological and disruptive. However, inevitably they become, in the quest for purity of outcome, self-destructive.
Not content with murdering the old ruling class, these Jacobins, such as Maximilien Robespierre, turned on their fellow revolutionaries who were either too radical (such as atheists) or not radical enough (those who had called for a slowing down of the terror.)
It’s an iron law of history that the revolution always eats its own children1 – as proven time after time in the centuries since. (source)
Pandora’s Bill
Bill C-59, An Act to implement certain provisions of the fall economic statement tabled in Parliament on November 21, 2023 and certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 28, 2023. This bill received royal assent on June 20, 2024.
What could be less revolutionary, less exciting? And yet, buried in the bill is a Pandora’s Box of environmental lawfare.
Bill C-59 was an omnibus bill. Full of many of bits of legislation including the passage of the CCUS Investment Tax Credit. But it is the relatively small changes to the Competition Act that will make a world of difference.
First off - full disclosure - I have not read the 546 page bill, but this article helpfully points to what is apparently the important part, (and can be found at the end of the article itself).
To paraphrase, the bill says that any Canadian business that makes any environmental claim has the reverse onus responsibility to prove that the claim follows “internationally accepted methodology/standards”. The latter I put in quotation marks as these are undefined. This nebulosity combined with the reverse onus provision (which was added by committee only three or four weeks ago) means there is effectively no reasonable threshold a plaintiff must reach before launching nuisance and malicious law suits and compelling investigations by the Competition Commission.
Clearly this creates open-season for anti-oil and gas lawfare. And unsurprisingly, the O&G industry has taken the view that the legislation is so nebulous and open to abuse (more on this below), the precautionary principle dictates removing any descriptions of their Net Zero aims and actions. Haters will see this as “proof” that they were Greenwashing all along, anyone who reads the pertinent text will understand that any other course of action would have been negligent.
How Will It Work With the Recent Changes?
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer - so happy to be corrected on any of this by more knowledgeable readers.
Firstly, the government added provisions that allow any six residents to launch a private action under the Competition Act rather than having to convince the Competition Bureau that a claim has merit (ie bypass the Competition Bureau).
Thus:
any six residents can bring a private action about any kind of environmental or climate related claim about your industry, processes, etc.
the burden of proof to be on the company to prove that their claims are accurate (the “reverse onus”), not on a complainant or the Competition Bureau to prove that it is false.
doing so according to the famous "internationally recognized methodology",
What is interesting about this is that, whilst it is aimed at the O&G industry, the wording is so broad and the barrier to action so low, that this could have huge “unintended consequences” far beyond the oil and gas industry.
Physics Beats Platitudes2
Create an unrealistic Myth of Utopia, use media-shaming and shareholder activism to impose ESG “Net Zero Targets” and “Climate Actions”. Stir up the “with us, or against us” mentality. Then be surprised when companies (and here I mean ALL companies) play the game. Everyone has initiatives: reduce their carbon footprint, establish emissions reductions targets and ambitions for making their business Net Zero by some arbitrary date, usually long after the board and management team’s retirement date…
But when reality bites, when physics doesn’t play ball, and companies start to miss these targets - one could imagine questioning the underlying assumptions. But no, the reaction is to treat the symptom (greenwashing) not the cause (physics and economics).
Its Not Me, Its You - why oil and gas will never be acceptable
There is an argument that net-zero initiatives within the oil and gas industry are really a form of appeasement to eco-activists. This is unfortunate because our second lesson of political history today suggests that appeasement of ideological dogma has bad outcomes.
Moreover, direct industry experience shows that whatever the industy does, it will never be enough. I remember Lundin Petroleum and their partners going to great expense to run electricity cables to bring onshore hydro-electricity to its Johann Sverdrup production platform. The field was used extensively in marketing because it had the “lowest Co2/bbl” production thanks to the hydro power. On a roll, Lundin Petroleum stepped up and promised to be Net Zero by 2030 .
The result? Greenpeace did what Greenpeace does and said “la, la, la, we don’t care and it doesn’t matter, whatever you do you are still an evil oil company”… (my paraphrasing, see quote below).
This is a case of Damned if you Do, Damned if you Don’t - you have lower-emissions Net-Zero initiatives and no one cares. Now in Canada with Bill C-59, you will get a tsunami of legal actions making you prove that every last word and comma is factual according to the "internationally recognized methodology". And if you go dark - it will be seen as proof of your duplicity.
That’s the bad news, now the good.
The only people we hate more than the Romans are the….. Splitters.
In the iconic Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the revolutionaries sit around discussing their victimhood, but even more passionately, they hate on the other revolutionary groups. When you are on a mission, any deviation, any compromise is Never Good Enough.
Unintended Consequences
This is the “revolution eating its children” manifest. For sure the first attacks will be against O&G, but soon, the more extreme ends will go after the splitters: anyone and everyone who is seen to be derailing the climate response by making enthusiastic environmental claims. As noted above, because it was NOT socially unacceptable to anything other than “on board” with ESG, Bill 59 will expose literally everyone: banks, tech companies, electricity suppliers, airlines, and with glorious irony, even renewable companies – none will be “green enough” for some elements of the eNGOS (because it’s simply not possible to meet unrealistic expectations - think of the delusional “Just Stop Oil” activists)
The net zero / energy transition is a form of revolution that aims to replace an existing energy system with something, in theory, better. Would that it be so easy.
In the early days of the revolution, promising an easy path to an utopian outcome was well, easy. As we progress, annoying things like physics and economics come into play and we discover that there are trade-offs, no easy solutions. When these trade-offs become impossible to ignore, the advocates for the energy transition splinter. The most obvious example of this is the schism with respect to nuclear power. Historically, the environmental movement has been strongly opposed to nuclear power but there is an awakening to the fact that nuclear power is the only way of providing always-on super-reliable low-carbon base-load electricity.
No one is immune - and remember that now any six residents can launch such actions in Canada.
Globally, recent actions against corporate greenwashing have targeted FIFA, IKEA, Deutsch Bank, H&M and Volkswagen, as well as electricity distribution companies, airlines, Unilever, Danone, Evergreen, Amazon, Google, Apple etc.
Après Moi Le Déluge
No one is is sheltered from this storm.
In the environmental/energy sector, beyond just the nuclear question, we can see that other trade-offs create division: environmental groups oppose new power lines which would transmit low-carbon electricity, similar groups oppose new wind farms, battery factories are not immune, and so on.
It is only a matter of time before renewable energy projects get caught up in the litigeous Bill-59, whereby some eNGO decides that a given project is just not good enough.
Eventually, the absurdity will shine through, but not before a lot of damage has been done to the economy and to the transition. In the meantime, the lawyers will be having an absolute fees bonanza, unless that is, they have made ESG statements about their own corporate endeavours (which they all have). Oopps.
None of this will help keep energy costs down and abate the cost-of-living crisis.
God Keep Our Land Glorious and Free
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
The current government has created a deplatforming, debate silencing club, and less than 24 hours after the changes became law, eNGOs are already wielding it.
This will get worse before it gets better. We stand on guard for thee.
Post Script.
Another (obviously unrelated) lesson from history:
Not exactly sure of the origin, but popularised, and maybe coined, by the excellent Doomberg.
You certainly found the perfect Monty Python clip. It is the people’s Front of Judea vs. the Judean People’s Front.
Nice article!
"... annoying things like physics and economics come into play... "
Indeed!