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Second, we should stop all subsidies to existing fuel-powered aerospace companies. Quebec’s Bombardier is not much of a national champion if it makes products that pump the atmosphere full of emissions, right?

Third, farm and heavy-equipment machinery using diesel or gasoline should no longer be produced in Canada. It’s hard to believe we not only continue to allow this, but we even encourage carbon-emitting manufacturers with the subsidy of accelerated depreciation under the corporate income tax system. My goodness. Where are the demonstrations?

Finally, all petroleum refining must be stopped and all petrochemical industries shut down the same way we’ve been ordering coal power plants to close.

Bombardier … makes products that pump the atmosphere full of emissions.

Now you might think that I’m smoking something not-yet legalized. And it’s true that these are irrational policies. Stopping manufacturing in Canada on the pretext of reducing downstream emissions is a pretty bad idea that achieves nothing: Instead of manufacturing taking place in Canada, it will shift elsewhere, with the resulting products simply being imported into Canada rather than being produced here. This is what happens when a country tries to act alone.

So why have we not taken the same view for the production of fossil fuels? If we don’t allow an oil pipeline because of upstream GHG emissions, we will simply import oil from other countries instead. We will also have fewer exports, as our customers import their oil from somewhere else. Worldwide GHG emissions will not be meaningfully different, but Canadians will be hurt with lower incomes and more expensive energy-intensive products.