Opinion: What Travis Toews could get besides oil divestment
This is a guest post from Mélanie Busby and Sébastien Collard, on behalf of Sortons la Caisse du Carbone coalition, which since 2017 has been campaigning for the CDPQ's exit from fossil fuels. The coalition includes Greenpeace Canada, SNAP Quebec, The Climate Reality Project Canada, the Association pour la voix étudiante au Québec (AVEQ), the David Suzuki Foundation, Recycle ta Caisse, Climate Justice Montreal (CWM), Leap Montreal, Mobilisation environnement Ahuntsic-Cartierville (MEAC), Eau Secours! and other citizen groups and unions. The post is a response to this op-ed by Alberta Finance Minister Travis Toews in the Montreal Gazette.
On November 5, Alberta's Finance Minister wrote in the Montreal Gazette that the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec's (CDPQ) decision to eliminate oil and gas stocks from its portfolio will affect the return on Quebecers' collective savings. This is strange, to say the least. The Sortons la Caisse du carbone coalition has shown that the Caisse's 50 largest oil and gas stocks have had a negative return in seven of the last ten years. If Quebecers had divested this portion of their collective savings in 2010 and reinvested it in the global fossil-free market, they would have earned an additional $16 billion in returns. The evidence shows that divestment will protect rather than hurt Quebecers' savings.
Mr. Toews goes on to discuss equalization from a very pointed perspective. Let's take a step back. Less than a century ago, Montreal was the economic heart of Canada. The current western prosperity that Mr. Toews boasts about didn't happen by magic. It began with investment, with men and women and capital moving from the rising sun to the setting sun. Labour and wealth have travelled across Canada, they have never been static. But what will happen in the not-too-distant future?
Continuing to rely so heavily on oil and gas for Canada's and the West's prosperity can only be a curse. The reputable firm Moody's has just tabled a report stating that "the shift to a net zero global economy is well underway and accelerating" and that "the oil and gas sector as a whole is the least prepared." So why take the risk of focusing on oil at a time when the major powers are aligning themselves with science to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by half within the next ten years? Why doom ourselves in this way? Let's look elsewhere, for example, at what Texas is doing.
In Texas, less and less land is being drilled and more windmills and solar panels are being built. Nobody is shying away from the new economy. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, is moving the headquarters of his renewable energy company there, and it is reasonable to believe that it will be worth more in ten years' time than the oil giant Saudi Aramco. Why choose fatality when you can rise?
The new economy is here. Clinging to the declining one while criticizing equalization could be like taking off your seatbelt and stepping on the accelerator just before a sharp curve.
Recently, Canada's new Minister of Environment and Climate Change noted that the province with the most investment in renewable energy in Canada is not Quebec or British Columbia, but Alberta. The CDPQ did not just announce a $4 billion exit from oil. It announced a plan that includes $18 billion in low-carbon investments by 2025 and $10 billion to decarbonize carbon-emitting industrial sectors such as mining, transportation, and agriculture.
Why denounce the CDPQ's exit from a sector in decline rather than considering Quebec as a collaborator in accelerating the necessary just and green transition? A transition that we know will create jobs and wealth. Albertans deserve the best, and we have no doubt about that.