for every man, woman, and child living in the country. And it’s also the annual loss in economic activity Canada can expect if Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault goes forward with his plan to cap oil sands emissions.
The good news is that Canada’s emissions per barrel have been going down for a while. Since 1990, greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of oil extracted from the oil sands have fallenThe bad news is that energy producers will probably not achieve a larger reduction in seven years than they did over three decades.
That’s because our oil industry is primarily export-oriented. Roughly 80 per cent of the oil we produce gets shipped abroad by rail, pipeline, and boat. In addition to these countries’ abysmal human rights records, their lack of regulatory oversight compared to Canada’s strict environmental norms means we might actually end up exporting production to a far more polluting locale.