The Canadian economy is now officially shrinking, foreign capital flight has become a full-blown crisis, and Canadians themselves are voting to leave this country in record numbers with their money and with their feet. And it’s all 100% self-inflicted.

Premier Danielle Smith recently pointed out, “this onslaught of anti-energy, anti-agriculture, and anti-resource development policies has scared away global investments to the tune of half a trillion dollars, driving those investments and jobs out of Canada to much more attractive climates in the United States, Asia, and the Middle East.”

Martin Belanger (@Martyupnorth_2 on X) is the retired former Senior VP of Pieridae Energy. The company spent more than a decade trying to build an LNG export terminal in Nova Scotia to export North American gas to Europe, Asia, and South America. It would have been Canada’s first LNG terminal on the East Coast — there’s only one other LNG terminal today, but it’s in British Columbia, so not idea for accessing Europe’s gas-hungry markets.

Yet, in 2023, after spending many tens of millions of dollars on front-end engineering, the company walked away from the project without ever managing to get a single shovel in the ground despite having secured construction permits and even a 20-year contract with a German utility company worth $35 billion dollars (with loans backed by the German government).

The Canadian government blamed the collapse of the project on a lack of demand for Canadian gas (obviously untrue considering the contract the company had secured). Mainstream media cynically blamed it on the weak finances of the company — but a half-truth is a whole lie… when the government keeps moving the goal posts to endlessly stretch out and undermine the permitting and financing processes, even the most robust cash reserves are eventually exhausted and investors begin heading for the exits to find more attractive jurisdictions to invest their money.

Mr. Belanger is no longer bound by a confidentiality agreement. I sat down with him to understand how Canada strangled what should have been one of the most promising new oil and gas projects in Canada. It’s one example among many, but what was done to Pieridae Energy represents a pattern that is systematically crippling our country, from coast to coast to coast.

I felt it was extremely important to get his story on record so that investors, policymakers, and citizens themselves understand the gritty details of what is broken in our country and, by consequence, the steps that MUST be taken if Canada is ever to get back on a sustainable path. Fixing this (and reversing the investment outflows) is going to take far more than just ousting an ideologically hostile political regime — the regulatory and bureaucratic framework that has grown up underneath that regime, both federally AND provincially, is going to take extremely deep reforms to fix.

Understanding the grainy details of what went wrong is the first step towards fixing the problem.

I hope you enjoy this latest special edition of the Julius Ruechel Podcast, available here on Substack as well as on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else where you listen to podcasts.

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