Canadian imports to U.S. worth hundreds of billions: Shields

By Cal Braid
Taber Times
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

A federal emissions and production cap are on the table and Alberta is pushing back. Bow River MP Martin Shields rose to speak in the House of Commons on Dec. 3 and quoted a news report that listed the 10 top U.S. imports from Canada in 2023. Imports that totalled $340 billion.

 “Oil, gas, and petroleum products made up $160 billion of that, which is 48 per cent,” he said. “Agricultural products made up $30 billion, which is 10 per cent. Agricultural products depend a lot on oil, gas, and petroleum products when we are talking about fertilizer and machinery. Transportation equipment made up $74 billion, which is 25 per cent. Transportation equipment is steel, metal, and all sorts of things made from the resource sector,” he stated.

 “This is a tremendous amount of export to a country that is looking for self-sufficiency in North America, and it comes from Canada,” he added.

Shields said that currently, the U.S. does not have a cap on emissions or oil and gas production and the president-elect has not indicated he would impose one. “He is looking to expand their oil and gas production, and he is looking for more from his biggest trading partner in oil and gas: Canada,” he said, making his point. “That is why we need North American energy security.”

 He claimed the cap would cause a reduction in oil of one million barrels per day by 2030, plus an additional cut of one million barrels per day by 2035. “This cap on oil emissions is a cap on responsible Canadian oil production, jobs, and paycheques. In Alberta, we are talking about a reduction of 92,000 jobs. We are talking about $12 billion in government revenues lost.”

 He cited the Conference Board of Canada think tank, which estimates that the cap would reduce Canada’s GDP by $1 trillion by 2030. It estimates a loss of 151,000 jobs across Canada by 2030, slowing the GDP by 2030 from 15.3 per cent to 14.3 per cent.

 Then he shared his firsthand experience of other forms of energy production, like solar and wind. “I have the largest ones in Canada in my riding for solar and wind energy production. The other day at seven o’clock in the morning, there were no sunlight rays hitting solar panels, no wind moving, and not one iota of power was coming out of solar or wind that morning. At seven o’clock in the morning, there was nothing. What supplied it? Natural gas was supplying the energy we needed in Alberta.”

 Solar and wind energy structures, he pointed out, are built with steel, aluminum, and plastics. “All those things to make solar and wind energy come from the resource industry, other than glass. Now here is an interesting thing about glass: It takes sand. It takes a specific kind of sand. National Geographic reports that China is destroying estuaries all over the world as mining companies get that best small, round sand to make glass. It is not the stuff in the deserts, which is rough.”

 Shields doesn’t often flinch or waver when it’s his turn to speak. And from the top down, the province seems braced to go down swinging on this issue.