TD-Pembina-Jaccard report needs to be taken seriously
Don Drummond is one of the smartest people I know. I first met him when he served the Government of Canada as a senior official in the Ministry of Finance, during Brian Mulroney’s time as prime minister. At the time, Canada was running a string of $35 billion budget deficits.
Drummond came to our Editorial Board at The Edmonton Journal and showed us how within three years, that deficit could turn into a balanced budget, then a surplus. Needless to say, I was more than a bit sceptical.
Then governments changed.
Paul Martin became Jean Chretien’s finance minister, and within three years Canada was running surpluses: all because of the fiscal plan created by Drummond and his colleagues in the Ministry of Finance. Don followed the best tradition of senior public servants: to provide frank and fearless advice to the government of the day.
Mulroney didn’t follow it, Chretien did. And as a result, we had a decade of straight surpluses.
So it was a real pleasure to see Don in Toronto last week, when we were both guests on BNN, the Business News Network. These days, Don is Chief Economist of TD Bank – and just as he did in his public service days, continues to offer fearless, sound, well-reasoned and coherent advice.
We ran into each other in the Green Room, where you go after the make-up artists get done with you (believe me, in my case it really does help!) and wait to be summoned to the set. I congratulated Don on the fine report supported by the TD Bank, and conducted by The Pembina Institute and Mark Jaccard, on the enormous range of benefits offered by greening the resource economy.
Just as I’ve argued in Green Oil: Clean Energy for the 21st Century?, the TD-Pembina report affirms that robust action on climate change will bring new economic opportunities even as we continue to realize the value of the oil sands.
Don told me of the virulence of some of the comments he received after the TD report came out, slanderous hate mail which questioned his motives and character.
Why?
Because the report is innovative, bold, visionary, and sets out considerable optimism for how we can make a transition from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon economy.
Like all economic modeling, it’s an imperfect forecast of the future. For the sake of intellectual rigour, it showed that the “status quo” energy economy would be slightly diminished over the next decade by robust and aggressive measures to curb carbon emissions. Yet because the alternative economy really hasn’t emerged, it’s unable to provide academically-sustainable forecasts on the wealth and the worth of the green economy that will evolve alongside the greener and more sustainable hydrocarbon economy.
Unfortunately, our political class reacted with the fear and timidity and mischaracterization that has become all too common. Premier Stelmach and federal energy minister Jim Prentice denounced a report they obviously hadn’t red. Drummond’s boss, TD chief executive Ed Clark, was excoriated as anti-Albertan by a Globe and Mail columnist.
All so sad.
All so unnecessary.
If we actually act like owners of the oil sands, if we actually develop the confidence to lead, we can leverage the $15 trillion wealth the oil sands represent into building and paying for a green future of cleaner and much more sustainable energy. The TD-Pembina-Jaccard report puts some modeling and costing on this promising future.
Drummond and his colleagues deserve respect and applause, rather than drive-by smearing from frightened politicians and their purblind acolytes.
-Satya Das
