And Good Sunday Morning! This is the last minute if you live near Cordova Bay and had not seen the notice, but the first of many January Community Meetings is this afternoon. If you can, please join me at the Cordova Bay Plus 55 Club, 5238 Cordova Bay Road, from 3-4:30 pm. If you have never attended one, the meetings are non-partisan and a great chance for me to hear directly from constituents about their concerns.
The cross Canada train trip was fantastic – as ever. One of the things about train travel is that you meet so many people and talk about things with people you would never have met otherwise. On our trip we met tourists from New Zealand, Australia, Austria, the UK, Japan and from all over Canada and the United States. For the first time in my travels, every American we met started by apologizing, making sure they let every Canadian they met on Via Rail know that they were appalled by the US President. One visitor from Chicago, a bit older than me, has been working with a group, a movement I had not heard of before. She goes out in the street with her cell phone camera to monitor ICE activities. I thought her very brave. And now I do know the name of the group – Indivisible Movement.
I am so shaken by the murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. At least one newscast I heard mentioned Indivisible, a legal and non-violent group. It relies on using rights under the US Constitution. And if I knew how to contact the lovely Chicago senior on the train I would urge her to stop being brave. It is too dangerous. An ICE agent has killed a 37 year old mother, an American citizen, whose last words were “I am not mad at you” to the man who then killed her. As George Floyd’s last words in that same city were “I can’t breathe.” Against the odds, the police who killed George Floyd were arrested, charged, tried and convicted. The White House is doing everything it can to shield the ICE agent who claimed lethal force was justified in killing Renee Nicole Good. The Minnesota government does not accept the claim by US Vice President JD Vance that the ICE agent has “absolute immunity.”
We will be seeing numerous versions of slow motion reviews of cell phone videos of Nicole Good’s murder. But it it now clear that the ICE agent who killed Renee Nicole Good had not been run over by her car as President Trump claimed. It is clear that she met no known definition of terrorist. For Canadians, the increased violence and lawlessness of police and federal officers in the US is not something we can simply ignore; No more than we can ignore the brutal Iranian regime, increasing anti-semitism or the ongoing violence in Gaza. But as neighbours, what do we do for justice in Minnesota? The basic precepts, the fundamental pillars of US democracy are under assault.
Trump is undeterred by the US Constitution. He does not wait for the US Senate to sanction military assaults, as in Venezuela. He has unilaterally pulled the US out of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, itself ratified by two-thirds of the US Senate. It remains a debate in the US as to whether he can do so legally without engaging the Senate in the process.
But claiming for the US the resources of another country is a reach too far for many. Trump says he can “run Venezuela.”
First, I want to dig into Trump’s actions and claims of the vast riches of Venezuelan oil and then to the opportunistic use of these events to try to push pipelines across British Columbia.
The first piece I want to share is from US economist, Nobel Prize recipient, Paul Krugman. What Krugman sets out is that the Chavez administration vastly inflated the value of its reserves. Somewhat like, but not identical to oil sands bitumen, Venezuela’s heavy crude is not prized. It is low value, requiring expensive steps in refining. Hence, Krugman’s title “sticky fantasy”.
The Emperor’s New Oil Wealth – The truth behind Trump’s black, sticky fantasy
Paul Krugman Jan 07, 2026
“When George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he claimed that the goal was to establish a democratic regime. Some members of his administration may even have believed that. But many leftist critics insisted that it was all about seizing Iraq’s oil.
Although I was an outspoken opponent of that war, and deeply cynical about the Bush administration’s motives, I never believed the “war for oil” story. The principal motivation for the war, I still believe, was to wag the dog — to use a showy military victory to secure Bush’s reelection. According to some political scientists, that was a mission the war did, in fact, accomplish.
Donald Trump’s Venezuela venture is a very different story. During his triumphalist press conference after the abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Trump never used the word “democracy.” He did, however, say “oil” 27 times, declaring, “We’re going to take back the oil that, frankly, we should have taken back a long time ago.”
Even so, whatever it is we’re doing in Venezuela isn’t really a war for oil. It is, instead, a war for oil fantasies. The vast wealth Trump imagines is waiting there to be taken doesn’t exist.
…..
On Monday, Trump suggested that he might reimburse oil companies for investment in the nation he claims — with no basis in reality — to control, reimbursing them for their outlays there. That is, we’ve gone in a matter of days from big talk about huge money-making opportunities to a proposal to, in effect, subsidize oil-industry investments in Venezuela at U.S. taxpayers’ expense….
Which is not to say that nobody has profited from the abduction of Maduro. A few months ago Trumpist billionaire Paul Singer bought Citgo, the former U.S.-based arm of Venezuela’s state-run oil company. Citgo owns three Gulf Coast refineries custom-built to process Venezuelan crude, refineries that have suffered from the U.S. embargo on imports of that crude. If Trump lifts that embargo, Singer will receive a huge windfall. But this windfall will have nothing to do with reviving Venezuelan production.
Singer has made huge political donations to Trump, raising questions about how much he has influenced policy. His purchase of Citgo was also remarkably well-timed. What did he know?
At a deeper level, Trump’s apparent belief that oil in the ground is a precious asset is decades out of date.
These days oil is cheap by historical standards. …. [current prices] $62 a barrel wouldn’t be high enough to make investing in [Venezuela’s] Orinoco Belt, where the estimated breakeven is more than $80, profitable even if there were no political risks.
In short, Trump’s belief that he has captured a lucrative prize in Venezuela’s oil fields would be an unrealistic fantasy even if he really were in control of a nation that is, in practice, still controlled by the same thugs who controlled it before Maduro was abducted.”
And now to the Canadian perspective. Does Trump claiming to own Venezuela’s oil have any impact on the oil sands?
This analysis is helpful. It is pure opportunism by Alberta to claim that the situation in Venezuela means we need more pipelines in Canada:
“The United States intervention in Venezuela and seizure of the country’s president immediately raised questions about what impact American stewardship of the oil-rich nation could have on demand for Canadian bitumen.
But Werner Antweiler, an associate professor at the University of British Columbia and expert on international oil economics, argues it won’t make a new pipeline from Alberta to B.C.’s coast any more necessary, or economically viable. He called the arguments otherwise “opportunistic.” “They will find any reason to make their political case, but that is not the same as making an economic case,” Antweiler said. Shifts in the market reflect future expectations, but Antweiler says the circumstances on the ground in terms of oil production haven’t changed. That will take years and require a much larger political transformation.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith had said earlier in the week she thought the situation increases the urgency of expediting projects to diversify and expand oil exports — including a new pipeline to the West Coast, according to the Canadian Press. Smith signed a memorandum of understanding with the federal government in November to explore a possible pipeline project.
Premier David Eby opposes this push and responded to Smith’s latest comments on Tuesday by arguing that no private proponent has stepped up to pay for a pipeline, and the only way to make one happen would be with massive public subsidies. Eby called for promoting energy independence, but suggested it would be better to spend public funds to increase Canadian refining capacity. He said this could satisfy domestic and demand and be shipped abroad. “It’s something we should be talking about,” Eby said. “As opposed to shipping raw resources out as quickly as possible.” But Antweiler takes issue with this plan as well. He said Eby is “misunderstanding” how refinery economics works, and that it is a lot easier to ship crude oil than gasoline. “You build refineries to satisfy our local demand,” Antweiler said. “If the local demand isn’t there, it’s not going to pay off.
The last major Canadian refinery to come online — Canada has 17 total — was the Sturgeon facility built north of Edmonton. This was built with substantial public investment, but has turned into a financial boondoggle. Anweiler says a better option would be to upgrade the current Trans Mountain pipeline and dredge Burrard Inlet to allow more oil to be loaded onto ships, lowering costs. Eby is supportive of these types of plans. Real impact of Venezuela situation on global oil markets a long way off. The idea behind building a new pipeline is to transport oil to tidewaters more cheaply. This would diversify trade and make Alberta oil more competitive, particularly important if the market was suddenly flooded with Venezuelan oil. But Antweiler said it is unlikely Venezuela’s oil industry can ramp up production and push the price down any time soon. He said the country’s oil infrastructure has been “ruined” by years of corruption and mismanagement. Experts estimate this could require as much as $100 billion to fix.
President Donald Trump met with oil executives at the White House on Friday to try to drum up that investment, according to U.S. news outlets. But Antweiler said companies will likely be reluctant to make an investment when the next U.S. administration could lose interest. And even if that investment is made, it may be years before the gains are realized. Antweiler said Venezuela produces fewer than 1 million barrels per day, down from a peak of more than 3 million 30 years ago. “Anyone who’s suggesting you could just flip the switch and crank up the production from 1 million to 3 million barrels today, that’s completely unrealistic,” Antweiler said. This is also a small fraction of global oil production, currently about 100 million barrels per day.
Another problem facing long-term investors is that “peak oil” is likely already reached amid flattening worldwide population and decarbonization efforts in major economies such as China. “In China, every second car that is now being sold is either electric or hybrid electric,” Antweiler said. But Smith continues to push for a new pipeline. Antweiler says this is partly because Alberta has a “chip on its shoulder” that dates back to Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Plan. ‘They want this pipeline no matter what,’ he said. ‘Even though it doesn’t make economic sense.’”
Speaking of people who seem to want a pipeline built and will grab any argument to promote it, we come to the latest arguments from our prime minister. Mark Carney was reported by anonymous Liberal MPs to be quite emotional when speaking to his caucus in defence of the MOU with Alberta. He urged his caucus to support the MOU, suppress objections to the pipeline, to keep Alberta in Canada; to blunt the separatist movement within Alberta.
So far, in 2026, it is hard to see how we get to the Happy part of “Happy New Year.” But we will, because we must. I am so grateful to be Canadian. I am doubly grateful to be a Canadian parliamentarian. And I feel a strong sense of responsibility to share what I learn and stand up for democracy. This little letter is one avenue. The community meetings are another.
Please use your voices, letters to the editor, etc to point out the fallacies of the unjustified notion that there is any reason to build more pipelines, much less any reason for urgency. The calls to move and move FAST are calls to ignore planning and thinking.
There is one very HAPPY bit of news to share, with a big thank you!! The Green Party succeeded in year-end fundraising and has totally paid off all debt! Finishing with a surplus going into 2026 is very encouraging! Thanks to all who chipped in!
Until next week, many thanks!! and please sign the Peace Charter petition. Tomorrow is the deadline to add your name!! So please do it now.
Love and thanks.
Elizabeth