“Wind and sun don’t need to transit the Strait of Hormuz.” That message resonates, amplified by the global energy shakeup of 2022–2026. Indeed, no democratic government should be dependent on a Faustian bargain with the OPEC oil cartel or Kremlin proxies drilling in the Siberian tundra. Yet that is precisely the outcome Canadian energy policy has been forcing.

Canada’s contradictory climate strategy

Canada’s European allies are handicapped by energy insecurity and vulnerable to global gas imports, especially after (rightfully) banning Russian supply. Brussels is eyeing possibilities to diversify from the U.S., on which the EU now depends for more than half of its imported LNG, and for which the EU pays a hefty premium. Canadian environmental ideology is drivinghigh energy and electricity prices in Europe that are responsible for the rise of the same right-wing populist extremists that those same Canadian ideologues abhor. Canada’s recent LNG deal with the EU ensures gas exports to Europe while guaranteeing Canadian jobs in one of the world’s lowest-emission LNG operations: British Columbia.

Yet, political opportunists have constructed a polarizing narrative: a black-or-white choice between “good” and “bad” energy sources. That approach is dividing the country, now on the verge of possible disintegration. Forcing an ideological policy choice that risks breaking up the country is necessarily an abject failure.