A certain kind of grandiose geopolitical theorizing has been derided as “flinging continents about” by those who emphasize the intractability of significant obstacles in the real world. And it can and should also be said of politicians who cruise about mentally, and literally in jet airplanes, in a comfy world of trendy abstractions, playing a kind of Herman Hesse “glass bead game” of skilfully configuring high-falutin’ polysyllabics in isolation from shabby reality. Which brings us to the breaking news that Canada’s transformative leveraged catalytic federal administration under Mark Carney has suddenly announced a trillion-dollar plan to leverage the catalytic transformation of our electricity grid into some gleaming galactic marvel twice its present size in under 25 years.
Now “suddenly announced” might seem a bit unfair since the Toronto Star, long a Liberal house organ, calls it “Canada’s long-awaited new electricity strategy”. And indeed nowadays the government is even slow to generate verbiage although it was of course obvious to everyone that if we were really going to go to Net Zero and deep-six all that nasty oil and gas it was going to require a catalytically transformative leverage of our capacity to distribute as well as generate electricity.
Some rube at the back shouts “What’s the actual plan here” and is promptly escorted from the premises. Ha ha! You can’t play the glass bead game. Get that bum outta here. As the WSJ explains:
“Canadian officials intend to begin consultations over the next four months with the provinces, indigenous groups, and electricity generators and utilities about how to double capacity.”
Begin consultations? So it’s not really even a plan to have a plan yet? Yes. There’s no there there. Just big words, and a big bill. And a glittering abstract masterpiece of Davoisian terminologies.
Carney is a past master of the glass bead game. For instance, in announcing this plan-like object he intoned at a press conference that:
“We cannot pursue business as usual. We cannot simply rely on restrictions and prohibitions. We must do things differently.”
It is an impressively reassuring, if windy, way of stating the obvious as a preface to a plan to keep doing exactly what they have been doing since 2015, despite all the failures and destruction to the country’s economy. And it’s not just that his administration is, in Dave Barry’s immortal words, looking for expensive new ways to appear ridiculous. Under Trudeau we had things like the program to instal small cabins for over $57,000 a piece so the massive influx of immigrants who find camping too Canadian would camp in them but “It was not possible to determine whether the program successfully implemented a cost recovery model”, speaking of the glass bead game. Far from repudiating this approach, Carney’s regime boasts, constantly, of making very detailed handouts to very specific firms whose business plans it finds worthy, while those not in favour with the high and mightily august continue to drown in taxes and red tape.
For instance:
“Rainy River Cattlemen's Association is receiving $302,220 to support phase two of the construction and productivity improvements to a regional sales barn. Specifically, this project includes updating of the pole barn, improvements to road access, and the installation of improved lighting.”
The pole barn. A federal government with a half-trillion-dollar budget (and deficit to match) is busying itself with the improved lighting in a barn in Rainy River. Which is not just utterly futile anti-market micromanagement, but is 100% not doing things differently. It’s exactly what not just Trudeau, but his allegedly conservative predecessor Stephen Harper did.
Another in the Carney glass-bead-game repertoire is the incessant bragging about building things including power plants at “speeds not seen in generations”. But repetition does not make it so. And BTW the Wikipedia summary of the Hesse novel includes that:
“The rules of the game are only alluded to – they are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. The game is essentially an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences. It proceeds by players making deep connections between seemingly unrelated topics”.
Indeed. Like linking the construction of real projects back, one imagines, in the World War II era when the government, if cornered, actually could build things quicky with power plants that nobody is building today.
It is also noteworthy that in announcing this non-existent massive grid expansion, the Prime Minister appears to be open to natural-gas power generation as well as wind, solar and whatever is suddenly cool, from green hydrogen to geothermal. The Wall Street Journal explains that:
“In a shift from his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, Carney is signaling that the government is open to natural-gas production to meet future electricity needs. The Trudeau administration’s clean-energy initiatives aimed to discourage, but not necessarily ban, the use of natural gas.”
Signaling. Not actually advocating. Open to. Not actually using. You get the idea. Or lack of it.
In the Star version of this bafflegab:
“At a news conference on Parliament Hill, Carney said there is a role for gas in helping some provinces meet an anticipated increase in demand for electricity. ‘Under some interpretations of the current electricity regulations, it would be difficult to build some additional natural gas that would complement much bigger builds,’ Carney said.”
Um what?
The PM is a past master of this cosmic verbal juggling that dances and flashes in a dazzling blur. Hence, the Star also notes:
“‘We are putting in place a series of initiatives that will make material emission reductions. We will update our climate plans and emission reduction targets in due course,’ Carney said when asked whether Canada is still committed to reaching its 2030 emissions reduction target.”
Yokels may complain that the question was whether we would meet a specific target by a specific date. But Carney is not one to be snared in rustic specifics. Instead, as the CBC reported, he soars through the cosmos with utterances such as:
“The path to affordability is electrification; the path to competitiveness is electrification; the path to net zero is electrification. Electrification underpins everything, our emissions, our environment, our economy.”
Note how cleverly he links spending a trillion bucks he ain’t got with lower prices. We peasants can only gape. Or wonder what this famous “path to competitiveness” is paved with and where it lies. Somewhere around Orion, possibly.
Another thing Carney actually said, in the sense of words he uttered if not substantive meaning conveyed by same, (quoted by the WSJ among others) was:
“We have to unlock Canada’s full potential as an energy superpower. Get it wrong, and Canadians will pay higher utility bills. Be too timid, and Canadians will end up short of power – losing good jobs and growing reliant on foreign suppliers.”
Again, it wraps the banal in the sesquipedalian with a touch of John Wither warning against two opposed follies that may not leave any Golden Mean path to tread. Note that in reality Canadians already are paying higher utility bills, are already short of power, and are not unlocking our potential as an energy superpower. But the kind of voters who swoon over Carney’s $2,000 shoes, PhD in economics and constant international travel to talk this way also swoon over the apparent triangulation, the aesthetically pleasing rhetorical gliding of the glass beads between actual free markets and hydrocarbon energy and eating moss in a cave.
Then there’s the bit where:
“Documents outlining the government’s strategy said the proposed expansion of Canada’s electricity capacity by 2050 is forecast to cost over 1 trillion Canadian dollars, or the equivalent of [US]$730 billion.”
Hmnnn. Tricky. Canada’s GDP being something on the order of US$2.39 trillion, he’s planning to spend over a quarter of it in addition to the massive sums already haemorrhaging out of Ottawa. Or something. In the Star version:
“The new strategy says construction will cost more than $1 trillion and public dollars will be used to cover some of the cost. The strategy doesn’t say how much money the government is willing to spend to achieve the goal, although it mentions offering tax credits and bringing back energy-saving retrofits for up to a million households. Carney said the government will pay for those retrofits through loans, grants and ‘complementary measures.’”
Ooooh. Complementary measures. Seven glittering syllables strung out in the aether. The audience melts.
Oh, by the way, the Glass Bead Game ends with the main character plunging into reality to disastrous effect.
I had to look up the glass bead game to find out what it was. If this is how our lords and masters occupy their time, could we leave them to it and let the rest of us get on with lives?