Canada: A Shy Energy Giant

"Canada holds 163,108,000,000 barrels of proven oil reserves as of 2025, ranking #4 in the world and accounting for about 9.24% of the world's total oil reserves of 1,765,151,568,000."

"Canada has proven reserves equivalent to 188.6 times its annual consumption levels (based on 2024 data). This means that, without net exports, there would be about 189 years of oil left (at 2024 consumption levels and excluding unproven reserves)."

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Visual Capitalist 

"Canada has significant reserves of conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources. Canadian oil production is focused in the west of the country, especially in Alberta. Canada’s proven oil reserves remain among the world’s largest — estimated at around 168 – 170 billion barrels (about 10 % of global reserves), with the majority in oil sands. The largest oil reserves are found in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, which have around 18.2 % and 16.2 % of the total reserves, respectively."

"Canada also produces natural gas, with reserves and production primarily in provinces such as British Columbia, Alberta, and the Northwest Territories. Producing natural gas involves extracting gas from underground reservoirs and processing it so it is suitable for various uses, such as heating. In 2025, Canada’s natural gas production averaged about 19 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d), making it the fifth-largest producer globally and accounting for roughly 5 % of world natural gas supply."

"Canada is currently the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, with production near 6.0 million barrels per day in 2024, including oil sands, conventional, offshore, and liquids."

Olivia Bush, Made in CA   

A large oil refinery along the Athabasca River in Fort McMurray, Alta.  dan_prat/iStock/Getty Images 

 

New Brunswick, an eastern province of Canada was the second place in the world in 1859 to discover oil and gas would bubble to the surface when a hole was drilled in the ground. New Brunswick has a wealth of fossil fuel; an estimated 77.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Natural Resources Canada. New Brunswick held the knowledge of its great natural resources close to its chest, making the choice not to develop its reserves. The province imposed an indefinite moratorium on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in 2014 judging it to be environmentally unfriendly. 

 

Yet it is precisely that system of extraction that is required to draw up the provincial gas reserves. New Brunswick is not alone among Canadian provinces in the abundance of its energy resources, given the Canadian total of about 1.4 quadrillion cubic feet. And according to an analysis conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy, that plenitude of energy is sufficient for Canada to provide natural gas needs for the entire world for a period of 200 years. 

 

When Japan's prime minister travelled to Canada in 2023 and a year later Germany's chancellor followed, both leaders had a distinct and direct purpose in mind. To persuade the Canadian government of those countries' dire need for a reliable energy source in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when the U.S. and the EU took punitive steps against Russian aggression by sanctioning Russian gas whose sale helped to fuel the war. Their persuasive efforts fell on deaf ears. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's off-handed response was that there was no business case to be made for Canada to export gas.

 

 

 

Under the new Liberal government headed by Marc Carney that succeeded the Trudeau government, Canada re-elected yet another figure influential in environmental circles dedicated to ensuring that energy resources were kept underground, as a source of carbon dioxide that was adding fuel to global warming, responsible for dramatic weather changes and adding to natural disasters in extreme weather conditions. Resistance to oil pipelines to tidewater for shipping abroad, to continued exploitation of the Alberta heavy crude oil to a world hungry for energy, continues under the current prime minister.

 

A situation where a country's vast natural resources are being left underground, with the full potential of extraction not to be realized on the basis of the harm it would do to the environment already in a situation of degradation from climate change. This despite vast technical advances in the extraction of oilsands for a cleaner product. And in the face of the fact that Canada's contribution to global greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is slightly more than 1-percent of the world total. 

 

A situation that has led Canada to export its oil to U.S. refineries at a discount, and where the U.S. sells that refined oil elsewhere at a profit denied to Canada. In turn, Canada continues to import oil from the Middle East for the energy needs of New Brunswick and Quebec, lacking a pipeline that would provide them with Canadian oil from the Western provinces; pipelines are dirty words to environment-dedicated British Columbia, New Brunswick and Quebec. 

 

The Maran Gas Hector

 

And out of this impasse the absurdity of an Australian oil tanker, the Maran Gas Hector, sailing 25,000 kms from Gladstone, Australia, across the Atlantic to New Brunswick's Saint John harbour where it docked and proceeded to unload its cargo to fill the need of the very province sitting atop a wealth of untapped oil reserves.  A decade ago four LNG export terminals were proposed for Canada's Atlantic coast, but the prospect failed to resonate. Leading to the shipping across a vast distance, of Australian natural gas. 

 

Unlike Canada, Australia has exploited its reserves for export since the 1980s as supercooled liquefied natural gas through its 10 LNG export terminals and thousands of kilometres of natural gas pipelines. As opposed to Canada's single LNG export terminal in Kitimat, British Columbia, just a year old, following a lengthy process of environmental reviews and legal confrontations, amidst civil environmental insurrectionists. 

 

The only LNG terminal on the Canadian Atlantic coast, and it's to import LNG, rather than export it. Photo by Twelve O'Clock High Drone Services

 

  

"What Is Being Done About It?"

"We are extremely concerned about such a phenomenon. We understand the rules of democracy, the freedom of speech and all of that. But as I said earlier, we are in a new reality. In this new reality, these kinds of incidents have an impact, and so it's different than just having a broad discussion and allowing people to come up with extreme views."

"Such acceptance may give rise to expressions of hatred by other parts of the public and repeating messages that are inflammatory, that are hateful, that are discriminatory."

"[While people should be able to speak freely] within the law [there are ongoing discussions how to preserve democracy while protecting] citizens from hateful speech, from brainwashing, from misinformation and disinformation."

"This is one of the biggest challenges of these times, and we face that, and I would only say that the best way to do it is to do it together and share our experiences." 

Israeli ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed

Israel’s Ambassador to Canada said he was unnerved by rising anti-Semitism here. “Some of the things I’ve witnessed here to me are mind-boggling,” Ambassador Iddo Moed testified at the Senate human rights committee: “When it comes to attacking Jews here, that’s very troubling.”  Blacklock's Reporter

 

"Last week, a Global News investigation uncovered that roughly 450 individuals with various roles inside Hamas have ties to Canada. These include Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and others with relatives or associates here. CSIS did not confirm if these individuals are currently under scrutiny. Global reported the agency “was investigating Canadians in Middle East terror groups, but declined to elaborate.”

The exposé yet again confirms a long-running trend: Canada remains one of the most vulnerable western jurisdictions for infiltration by Hamas-linked operatives, and the aftermath of October 7 has deepened the country’s exposure."

"Hamas and its ideological progenitor, the Muslim Brotherhood, have spent decades cultivating networks across western democracies, exploiting charitable sectors, legal systems, immigration frameworks, and political sensitivities. A series of international cases that have come to light this month alone illustrates how widespread and deep-seated this threat ecosystem has become."

"A full audit of asylum, refugee, and citizenship cases from the past decade must be conducted to identify any fraud or irregularities, and denaturalization and deportation measures should be enforced wherever the law permits."

Joe Adam George, Middle East Forum  

"I think that there is a total lack of law enforcement of these marauders who are on the university campuses, who are in the streets of Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and so on."

"And I think this lack of law enforcement, plus the statements that are made by faculty associations, by unions, has created an environment of absolute permissiveness, so that it is socially acceptable right now to be an antisemite."

"[The recognition of the Palestinian state by the Canadian government is what has opened] Pandora's box against Israel, against the Jewish community in Canada." 

Talia Klein Leighton, president, Canadian Women Against Antisemitism 

 

News that the Senate of Canada in mid-November hosted a Palestinian tribunal came as a surprise and a shock to many. It shouldn't have; 'Palestinian' sympathizers, choosing to be oblivious to the lethal violence Palestinians inflict on their neighbours in Israel, lingering instead on the populist narrative of Palestinian victimhood, see the current Israel-Gaza conflict in terms that Palestinian public relations pose as an aggressive 'occupier' dominating and abusing the human rights of an Arab population struggling for recognition as a sovereign nation.

 

The history of that population is that of refusing in 1947 the United Nations plan for Partition, and refusing ever since to recognize the reality of the Jewish state, while taking very opportunity to turn down negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to reach an agreement of mutual recognition, peace and assured security, in favour of destroying Israel and taking possession of the entire Judaic ancestral geography. For three-quarters of a century those calling themselves Palestinians have launched suicide missions with a goal to kill as many Israelis as possible.

 

In that same period of time, Israel has absorbed two million Arab Palestinians as citizens able to take full part in the nation's politics, social life and business in every sphere of activity. Where Palestinians represent a full 20 percent of Israeli society, no Jews are permitted to live among Palestinians within the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, yet the world accepts the Palestinian Authority's charges that Israel is an apartheid society and that it is Israel to whom charges of 'genocide' must be attributed. Not the Palestinians whose focus is killing Jews, much less the abhorrent October 7 slaughter by Palestinian terrorists committing mass murder on a grand scale.

 

Supporters stand in front of an anti-Israel encampment on McGill University campus, in Montreal, Monday, June 17, 2024. Photo by Ryan Remiorz/THE CANADIAN PRESS

 

Canada, which the Liberal governments of the past decade have transformed in every conceivable way, including an open-doors invitation to immigrants, refugees, migrants and illegal entrants to Canada, resulting in the notable fact that circulating within the population are members of the Iranian IRGC, and terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, given entry visas, landed immigrant status, even citizenship. Enabled to infiltrate Canadian society, politics, institutions, academia, unions to support the 'Palestinian cause'. To the extent that the rot of their anti-Israel, antisemitic slanders have taken deep root.

 

The Senate's two-day Palestinian tribunal featured panelists who in the past were refused entry to Canada by the Canada Border Services Agency, for their denials of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that the Charlie Hebdo  atrocities were arranged by French authorities, and that all the lethal attacks targeting Israel were fictions; their truth rather charging Israel of intentions of genocide against the hapless, helpless Palestinians, the world's most pitiable refugees.

 

Israel's ambassador to Canada spoke before the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights, along with other invited participants. A Jewish law student at the University of Alberta, Rachel Cook, described for the committee "an institutional coddling of people who have views that the administration (of universities) agree with". Her own experience of asking her university to display a menorah for Hannukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights occurring the same time as Christmas, was telling.

 

In a speech to protesters on Oct. 28, Adil Charkaoui, speaking Arabic, denounced "Zionist aggressors" and called on Allah to "kill the enemies of the people of Gaza and to spare none of them." Charkaoui's speech drew broad condemnation from politicians like Premier François Legault and groups like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs. (Adil Charkaoui/X)

"As a Jewish student on a university campus, I did not conflate my menorah with Zionism. My institution did when they chose not to put it up."

"I'm a Canadian Jew. I'm not Israeli. I asked to display a menorah and because the institution was worried about showing support for Israel, they took the (Christmas tree) down instead of doing it (displaying a menorah alongside the Christmas tree)."

"It wasn't me that conflated Zionists and Jews. It was them."

Rachel Cook 

"[Recognizing a Palestinian state at this point, where Palestinian leaders still refuse to recognize Israel goes against the Canadian government's foreign policy that has existed for years] which is, we will recognize the state of Palestine when and only when there is a negotiated settlement, when there is a path toward democracy."

"I'm not sure that [recognition] actually has any impact on foreign policy or has any impact on what actually goes on in Israel or in Gaza."

"And it certainly doesn't help the Palestinian people. All it does is open up the Jewish community to greater hatred, to greater targeting."

Talia Klein Leighton

Senator Leo Housakos of Quebec pointed out that despite ongoing conflicts worldwide, the only one that has disrupted Canada's social peace to the extent it has, has been the war in the Middle East, sparked by Hamas terrorists slaughtering 1,200 in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251 hostages, on October 7, 2023. Following which he asked Ambassador Moed where Canada stands on the global scale of combating antisemitism.

The ambassador responded that Israel is interested in knowing how official Canada is responding to the viral antisemitism being openly displayed in public. "What is being done about it?" 

 

Canada remains one of the most vulnerable western jurisdictions for infiltration by Hamas-linked operatives, and the aftermath of October 7 has deepened the country’s exposure. An anti-Israel protest in Toronto, Ontario, May 8, 2024.   Shutterstock