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"Skyrocketing oil prices do not create profits out of thin air. They redistribute money away from consumers and businesses and into the pockets of oil companies."
My op-ed for @nationalobserver.com: www.nationalobserver.com/2026/04/15/o...
Another great call: Canada needs a windfall tax on oil industry war profiteering.
Excellent piece by @hadrianmk.bsky.social
www.nationalobserver.com/2026/04/15/o...
To a certain extent, yes! Royalty rates do go up with the oil price, but they cap once the price hits CAD$120/barrel and prices are higher than that now. Alberta is making a huge windfall right now based on royalties alone, but the industry is making even more in profit.
All of these numbers come from the @policyalternatives.ca oil profits model. They're estimates based on the available public data. Learn more here: www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
The point is that we have an oil dependence problem, and it’s going to take a lot of money to get out of it. But we also have an opportunity here to pay for that transition using the excess revenues generated by the private extraction of public resources.
After all, that oil belongs to Canadians.
A 75% excess profits tax, like we did in WW2, would have generated $680 million this week.
That would have been enough to get started on 50,000 new public EV charging ports. That would double the existing network.
A 15% excess profits tax, like we did in 2022, would have generated $135 million this week.
That would have been more than enough to make public transit free across the country this week.
The second way to beat the profiteers is to tax excess profits.
We did it in 1940 and again in 2022. When the private sector is exploiting a crisis to make unreasonable profits, we should tax it and spend that money to help Canadians weather the crisis.
But cutting the gas tax doesn't solve the actual problem. It might even make it worse by propping up oil demand.
The real long-term affordability solution is to reduce oil dependence. Public transit, remote work, electric vehicles, heat pumps, etc.
That's the first way you beat the oil profiteers.
Where did $1 billion in excess profits come from this week? Among other sources, Canadian drivers paid an extra $300 million at the gas pump this week (compared to what they would have spent at pre-war prices).
Back in February, the industry was "only" banking $500 million per week. Did the industry suddenly get 3x more productive? No, the war in Iran pushed up oil prices by 50% and Big Oil is profiteering.
That's $9 million per hour of pure profit after expenses, taxes and royalty payments.
At this rate, the oil industry will bank $77 billion in profits in the next 12 months.
Hey it's Friday and the Canadian oil industry made $1.5 billion in profits this week.
🧵 Thread...
Last week, @policyalternatives.ca put together an urgent call for Canada to tax the profits that the oil and gas industry is making off the war in Iran. Yesterday, the best Carney could do was removing tax on average people, further defunding the state.
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
If oil prices remain at current levels for the next 12 months, the Canadian oil industry is on track to make $90bn in profits, which is $60bn more than it would have earned without the war...Applying 15% rate on excess profits of oil industry could generate $9 billion over the next 12 months. ⬇️
So far this government has:
- removed EV mandates (and moreover paused rebates to stall the market)
- removed carbon tax
- removed low carbon electricity policy
- removed gasoline tax
- removed oil and gas cap
when does the Canadian Federal government do climate policy?
They can mean the same thing! Though usually when we talk about a windfall tax it's a temporary measure to respond to a particular shock, whereas changing the underlying tax system is a more permanent measure.
A windfall tax on the Canadian oil industry could raise $46 billion this year... and the industry would still pocket $44 billion in profits.
My analysis with @davidmaccdn.bsky.social for @policyalternatives.ca: www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...
via @xkcd.com
As Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood writes about this report: "African countries import more than US$100 billion per year in fossil fuels even though Africa has enough renewable energy potential to meet 1,000 times its own energy needs."
www.clubofrome.org/wp-content/u...
(Less impressive than it looks because once I had the streak going I started bailing out of puzzles I wasn't sure about.)
I don't always Wordle, but when I Wordle I Wordle to win.
Not all good projects attract private investment. Lots of infrastructure (roads, sewers, etc.) is worth building even if it doesn't have a "business case."
...but we still shouldn't be subsidizing pipelines.
As competition for water peaks during hot summers, @policyalternatives.ca researcher @hadrianmk.bsky.social called for developers to disclose their water use “not on an annual basis, which is misleading, but on a peak basis.” www.nationalobserver.com/2026/03/23/i...
Come work with me at @pembina.org!
We checked in on Mark Carney and Danielle Smith's pipeline MOU to see how negotiations are going.
❗️ Spoiler alert: it's a disaster.
"There are no targets, there are no timelines, there is no way to evaluate progress, there is no way to evaluate whether it's consistent with the climate agenda and net-zero."
Me in CBC: www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
None of this is surprising based on the fall budget and Alberta MOU, of course, but still disappointing. To be clear, "position[ing] Canada as both a clean energy leader and a conventional energy powerhouse" is, by definition, not a transition, but that's the world the feds are living in right now.
There is also a noteworthy rhetorical divide between the "energy sector" and the "net-zero sector" (or even the "low-carbon aligned sector"). Why are they not the same thing? Should our energy not be net-zero?