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Canada trades more than $2 billion a day of goods and services with the U.S. That trade represented 76 per cent of our exports and 20 per cent of our GDP last year. President Donald Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, and his tariffs on steel and aluminum, put into stark relief our vulnerability to American protectionism. The growing trade war has unnerved local and foreign investors, causing a capital outflow from Canada to the U.S., which may partly explain Trump’s NAFTA dilatory tactics.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau now claims he takes seriously the need to diversify our trading markets, yet he gives short shrift to the most effective way to achieve that objective. Rather than shuffling chairs on the trade Titanic, Trudeau should change direction and embrace the enormous wealth contained in Canada’s vast oil and gas reserves. It would be faster, more certain and cost the government nothing if it simply liberated the private sector to invest capital, foster trade and pay more of the royalties and taxes that fund our critical social programs. Unfortunately, Trudeau’s jaundiced view of fossil fuels precludes that possibility.

Furthermore, despite all the fear-mongering about apocalyptic global warming, the government will not meet its Paris climate accord commitments and cannot even marginally reduce global temperatures without sending Canada back to the Stone Age.

Trudeau claims he takes seriously the need to diversify our trading markets, yet he gives short shrift to the most effective way to achieve that objective

We will soon see whether the new minister of natural resources, Amarjeet Sohi, does his job and responsibly promotes the resource sector or, like his predecessor, willingly succumbs to the anti-development zealots in cabinet and the PMO. His first task should be to fundamentally revise the Impact Assessment Act, which creates so much risk and cost that no new major private-sector pipeline is likely to ever be built in Canada as long as the act remains. A failure to fix this problem would be proof positive the Liberal government intends to strand much of our vast resource wealth in pursuit of its unattainable green objectives. I doubt that Sohi will take up the fight for fossil fuels, but would love to be proven wrong.