Who Stands to Win in Poilievre’s Canada: Oil Magnates
It’s a good time to be in Canada’s oil and gas industry. For all Canadians’ professed concern about climate change, the O&G business managed record revenues in 2022 and 2023, with a near-record projected for 2025. But if the CPC wins the next election, that’ll be just the beginning. A Poilievre government will pursue a light-regulation, fossil-fuel-boosting, drill-baby-drill agenda. It’ll also have cross-partisan support, thanks to growing calls for Canada to assert sovereignty over its resources.
Mark Carney’s Liberals have already cut the consumer carbon tax. Poilievre says he’ll go further by ditching carbon pricing on industrial polluters. He’ll also scrap the emissions cap on oil producers, which currently requires the industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—meaning less extraction, or cleaner but costlier production practices to reduce per-barrel emissions. He’ll repeal the Liberals’ Impact Assessment Act, which reviews infrastructure projects for environmental impacts. And he’ll eliminate the 2019 Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which caps how much crude a tanker can carry within environmentally sensitive areas of northern British Columbia. Repealing the law could lead to new pipeline projects stretching to the northern coasts of the province. Finally, he promises an “east-west” resource economy—i.e. new and upgraded pipelines. This could mean a new attempt to build something like Energy East, a pipeline from Alberta to the Maritimes that was derailed last decade by plunging oil prices and environmental concerns.
All in all, a Poilievre government would reduce regulatory barriers, generate an infrastructure boom, increase energy production and send more oil flowing across the country and to export markets. Even the Liberals could end up on board, given concerns that the United States is no longer a reliable destination for Canadian resources. Poilievre will capitalize on diminished public and political opposition, fighting like hell to make this moment count, locking in new, generation-defining infrastructure.
Poilievre’s plan is great news for the oil and gas industry and its shareholders. Suncor Energy, a Canadian energy behemoth out of Calgary and one of the largest companies in the world, met with Poilievre staffers in 2024 to talk energy and climate policy. That’s one of 45 energy-focused meetings Poilievre or his staffers have had with lobbyists in the past year; he also met with Imperial Oil, Enbridge and Cenovus, among others.
Provincial governments will win too, given the potential for higher royalties and tax revenue. Alberta is the most obvious beneficiary, but oil-producing runners-up Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador would benefit as well. So might New Brunswick, if an east-west pipeline ends up bringing western crude eastbound to Irving Oil’s Saint John Refinery. Even the Liberals might end up on board, given anxiety over Canada’s economic vulnerability.
The cost of climate change is rising, however, and relentless oil and gas expansion will drive it higher. Fast-tracking fossil-fuel expansion will have short-term benefits. But the long-term impacts of ramping up fossil-fuel production for use at home and for export around the globe have their obvious downsides. It’s far worse for the climate, which is to say, for all living things on this planet—including us.
