Tech Resources cancels its $20B Teck Frontier oilsands mine after 10 years of regulatory approval and unanimous Indigenous support, citing Justin Trudeau’s lawlessness—railway blockades defying court orders and $1B spent on compliance. Alberta loses 7,000 jobs and $8B in family incomes, while Trudeau’s carbon tax faces a constitutional ruling, risking federalism collapse. Investors flee as projects like Trans Mountain, Northern Gateway, and Energy East—totaling over $100B—fall victim to similar sabotage, contrasting with Trump’s America’s efficiency. Levant blames climate ideology and media bias, mocking Trudeau’s reconciliation failures amid protests by non-Indigenous activists, while warning of escalating violence and questioning Conservative leadership’s resolve. [Automatically generated summary]
Tech Mines, Tech Resources, just canceled a $20 billion mining project that had the support of all 14 local Indian bands.
Terrible news for employment, for Aboriginal reconciliation, terrible news for that.
Terrible news for unity.
Huge wins for our OPEC oil and gas competitors who've just succeeded in eliminating a huge source of oil.
It's a tragedy, really, but Justin Trudeau is celebrating.
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Okay, I'll give you the podcast now for my thoughts on the tech resources mine closure.
Tonight, after 10 years of regulatory approvals and 100% Aboriginal buy-in, the mighty tech oil sands mine is canceled, citing Trudeau's lawlessness.
It's February 24th, and this is the Ezra Levant Show.
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Anyways, to today's story, of course it was canceled, the Tech Frontier mine, just like the Northern Gateway pipeline was canceled and the Energy East pipeline was canceled and the Trans Mountain pipeline has been canceled.
This one is particularly huge, Tech Frontier, a $20 billion oil sands mine proposed by the Canadian mining giant Tech.
They're based in Canada, Vancouver actually, so this is about as good as it gets.
Canadian jobs, Canadian company, Canadian shareholders.
But late last night, the company sent a letter to Trudeau's environment minister just canceling the whole $20 billion deal.
They were nice about it.
I mean, they're still professionals.
They're still a publicly traded company.
They have to be grown up about things, but they've spent 10 years jumping through hoops, filling out government paperwork, consulting with local Indian bands.
10 years.
They passed every test, by the way.
They spent more than $1 billion just filling out the application form, really.
But they simply aren't going to go forward with the next $20 billion in the absolute malicious anarchy that is Justin Trudeau's Canada.
The letter talks about a public debate and global warming and things like that.
And it's true that Tech's mine would have had very low carbon dioxide emissions if you're worried about that sort of thing.
But none of that is relevant to why they canceled.
Like I say, they passed all the regulations already.
They were approved.
They were lawful.
They had their permit.
It's just that they no longer believe that Canada is a place with the rule of law.
At least they don't believe it fervently enough to bet $20 billion of their investors' money on the roulette wheel that when Justin Trudeau's in charge.
There is no constructive path forward for the project, they wrote.
The situation that has faced Frontier will be faced by future projects, and it will be very difficult to attract future investment, either domestic or foreign, they wrote.
Yeah, I mean, would you invest your life savings, let's say, in a Canadian oil sands project or pipeline under Justin Trudeau?
The strange thing about it was that Trudeau was set to make a final decision on the mine in just a couple of days.
And for weeks, Liberal MPs, including some in cabinet, have been publicly saying that they want to kill the deal.
There were constant leaks from the Liberal caucus meetings trying to paint Trudeau into a corner over it.
So yeah, Tech just pulled out.
I bet there's some deal in place whereby Trudeau gives them $1.1 billion in taxpayers' money to tech to avoid a lawsuit.
That's pretty much what Trudeau did when he killed the Transmountain Pipeline.
You don't actually think that's going to get built, do you?
I think it's a stitch-up, an inside job.
Literally hours before the deal was killed, the province of Alberta signed an agreement with 14 local Indian bands cementing their support for the project, support they had already professed.
So this wasn't suicide by tech.
This was a murder.
You know, Justin Trudeau has been a disaster when it comes to Aboriginal people.
I'm not just talking about how he fired Jody Wilson-Raybel, the first Aboriginal justice minister in history, because she put her loyalty to the law ahead of her loyalty to Trudeau and his McGill frat boy buddies.
But his whole shtick, his whole fake talk about reconciliation, it's just acting.
It's just another costume.
Just a few more lines to read in his dramatic actor voice.
We all saw the real Trudeau when a few Aboriginal activists paid, I think it was $1,500 to go to a fancy reception, and they asked Trudeau about a poisoned Indian town that Trudeau had promised to get clean water for, but he just hasn't.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you.
People that are not here are suffering from mercury poisoning.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here.
Thank you very much for your donation tonight.
I really appreciate the donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
And as we know, the Liberal Party is filled with different perspectives and different opinions, and we respect them all.
And our commitment to reconciliation continues to be strong and committed.
And we will continue to engage.
Thank you, sir, for your donation to the Liberal Party of Canada.
I really appreciate you being here tonight.
Thank you for being here.
That is why we are moving forward on reconciliation in a real and tangible way.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you for being here tonight.
Thank you for highlighting how important reconciliation is.
Thank you for being here tonight, sir.
Thank you very much for your donation to the Liberal Party.
What an absolute disgrace he is.
Yeah, we all know what Justin Trudeau thinks about Indians.
I mean, they're great for a prop or a woke tattoo like he's got to give them street cred with white liberal women, but he has no time or place for actual Indians.
Except as weapons to fight against the oil sands, even if 14 out of 14 Indian bands around the Tech Frontier mine want it, just like 20 out of 20 Indian bands want the coastal gas link pipeline, the Watsuit and First Nations.
Say, you know who loves Indians?
Tech does.
Hundreds of millions of dollars they've spent in contracts and jobs with Aboriginal people.
Countless agreements, training, cultural programs, jobs mainly.
If you watch my show a lot, you'll already know that the biggest employers of Aboriginal people in Canada are oil and gas and mining.
Of course, first of all, those activities often happen close to where Aboriginal people are.
So it's natural.
Second, the nature of the work is a good fit.
I am so proud of tech and all the other mining and oil sands and gas and pipeline companies.
They're the ones actually doing reconciliation with Aboriginal people.
What has Trudeau done other than mock Indians and put on a headdress?
The media is the worst, of course.
These past weeks they peddled disinformation that the railway blockades were either done by Indians or in solidarity with Indians, particularly those Fatsuitane First Nations up in northern BC where that coastal gas link pipeline is proposed to be built.
But, of course, that's a lie.
I told you that 20 out of 20 bands up there support the pipeline.
And when our own Kian Bexty went up there to check it out, who these protesters were, he really saw just a bunch of white guys who had come in from Ontario.
It was a fake protest.
Look at that guy.
That guy there.
He's from Ontario.
We identified him.
They're not real Indians.
They're a corporation funded by the Tides Foundation.
It's not a real Indian band.
How sad.
You know, canceling the tech frontier mine will cost $20 billion in construction jobs and countless billions more in ongoing oil operational jobs.
The families that would have gotten that employment, all the taxes paid, $20 billion, just gone.
That's a full percent off our GDP, you know.
I suppose that'll push the whole country into recession.
That's just the loss of 20 billion, that's 1%.
But on top of the loss of $10 or $15 billion each for the other three pipelines killed by Trudeau, the $40 billion LNG project that he killed, well, that's over $100 billion right there.
But everyone else in the world of finance, in the Toronto Stock Exchange, also in New York and London and Hong Kong and Frankfurt, they're all saying, thanks for the heads up, Tech.
Thanks for the warning.
We'll pass on Canada, thanks.
No mines, no ports, no bridges, no pipelines, no LNG facilities.
We'll go to Donald Trump's America, where they're drilling and fracking and mining like crazy.
Building pipelines in one year, not 10 years.
And other places.
Here's a map of Tech's operations around the world.
You can see they do a lot in Canada, but also in Peru and in Chile.
Now, Peru has been in a state of political chaos for years.
Riots.
Chile, too.
They had energy riots for weeks.
Remember that?
That's why they moved the UN Global Warming Summit.
I don't know if you remember, they raised the price of public transit in Santiago, the capital, to pay for some fancy new green buses.
People literally rioted.
They burned public utilities to the ground.
Now, tech is operating just fine in those semi-civil war places like Peru and Chile.
No problem.
No cancellation of any projects there.
Those places are more politically stable than Tech thinks Canada is.
Tech thinks they can make a go of it down there.
They're risky, of course they are.
But the risk-adjusted rate of return makes them a winner.
Tech can make a go of it down there, but not so in Canada.
Tech just can't, in good conscience, plow more of its shareholders' money into Canada, while oil and gas demand has never been higher around the world.
So that's Justin Trudeau's Canada.
I see Jason Kenney is appalled, of course, and well he should be, but as we've been asking for months, so what?
He keeps asking for things from Ottawa, but without an or else.
Why would Jason Kenney think that his mortal enemy, Justin Trudeau, the mortal enemy of the West and oil and gas, why would anyone think that Trudeau and his destroyers would do anything differently than they're doing right now?
Stay with us for more on this subject with Lauren Gunter.
Well, we've spoken about this tech frontier mind several times with our friend Lauren Gunter.
So it won't surprise you that he has a new column out today in the Edmonton Sun entitled, Tech Frontier Cancellation, Entirely Trudeau's Fault.
It gives me no joy to read through it, but every word of it is accurate.
Joining us now via Skype from Edmonton is Lauren Gunter.
Lauren, good to see you again.
They jumped through every hoop.
They threaded the needle every time.
10 years of doing the right thing, $1.1 billion they spent in compliance.
14 out of 14 Indian bands said we want this.
And then they looked around and said, what, are we crazy?
And they just left.
Federal Appeals Sticking Point00:11:36
I think that's what happened.
So Sunday morning, even, the Alberta provincial government signed up the last two Cree nations up in the area of this new mine to environmental agreements with the province.
That was a big sticking point, apparently, for the federal government.
So the provincial government worked very hard to get these two First Nations to sign on.
They did.
They make it a big announcement.
And then shortly after that, Tech pulls the plug.
And I have to say, I'm glad you didn't contact me last night because I was inarticulate.
I was so angry about this.
I was spitting, man.
I even did several radio interviews this morning and the same thing.
I'm tripping over my tongue trying to express just how furious I am about this and how furious I think Albertans are going to be.
I mean, we're talking here about 7,000 jobs in the construction phase.
7,000 jobs.
This would have, during the construction phase, raised the family incomes of Albertans by $8 billion over about a three-year period.
You know, that would be a huge chunk getting back to where we were before the NDP were elected in 2015 and crashed our economy.
And this is purely because the prime minister is weak, weaker than any prime minister I've ever seen.
And because he came out last Tuesday after his emergency meeting with his operations cabinet committee and said, yeah, I don't know what to do.
Let's just wait.
Let's just talk some more.
Let's let the people who are on the barricades continue to defy court orders and break the law.
That seems reasonable.
Doesn't it seem reasonable to you?
And as a result of that, Don Lindsay, who's the chief executive of Tech Resources, the people behind the Frontier Oil Sands mine, said, there's just no point.
We don't see a way forward.
And this is not something that was building for them for a long time.
I mean, I think they've had reservations for a long time.
But as recently as early last week, Tech had said, look, yes, oil prices are a little bit depressed right now, but we think over the lifetime of this mine, things will be fine.
So it's still economically viable as far as we're concerned.
And now, four or five days later, he says, well, events of recent days must mean the blockades, have convinced us that there is no way forward.
And That doesn't resonate only for resource industries in Canada.
This simply says to the world: don't put your money here.
There is no bonus for you.
There's no benefit to you to risk your investments because the federal government of Canada will not have your back.
They won't enforce court orders to end blockades.
They won't make sure that your shipments get through by rail.
They won't make sure that your manufactured goods can be built because all the component parts are coming.
It doesn't matter.
Some people throw down some burning tires and some wooden pallets on a train track.
They'll be frozen with fear about what to do.
They won't have any clue and they'll just let it sit there for three weeks.
Yeah.
You know, I couldn't help but notice that Donald Trump was in India today talking about more trade, 125,000 people meeting him in a stadium.
And the world is focused on other things.
America, which used to be so thirsty for our oil, yeah, they still take oil imports, but now they're a net exporter.
Oil production has never been this high around the world.
I hate to say it, you know, that chapter's indigo motto: the world needs more Canada.
We always say that, and there's a bit of self-righteousness and condescension in that.
But you know what?
The world should have more Canadian oil, but the world ain't waiting for Canadian oil.
They're getting it and doing it other ways.
And we just missed the moment.
And that's a substantial number of Chinese refineries are set up for the kind of bitumen heavy oil that we have.
I think we still have great potential to sell to China and other markets around the world, even if we're losing some of our edge in the United States.
But the point is not now: is there a market for our oil?
The point is, are we just going to beggar our economy so that we can make Bretta happen?
And I think that's basically what we've become as a country.
We've become a country that is quite prepared to shut down its economy in the name of saving the planet because we think somehow by not moving forward with economic developments, we are going to prevent global warming, which really still today is only shown in elaborate computer models, which cannot even replicate past climate, much less predict future climate.
This is such you see again here.
I'm becoming inarticulate because it is so frustrating to try and talk about this with the people on the other side because it is religious can't for them now.
This is beyond ideology.
This is cultish religious belief as far as they're concerned.
And they would be quite prepared to have all of us sit in the dark without food or jobs so that they could say, oh, look what we have done to save the planet.
You know, it's been interesting watching different people react to their rail lines being shut down.
I think Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal don't care when it's some Western thing shut down, but God forbid you shut down their via rail.
You shut down their highway.
Oh my God.
Oh, I thought the inconvenience and the frustration would only be felt in Alberta.
I didn't think I had to do anything.
It's, you know what, I mean, I live in Toronto now, and of course, I don't want anyone to be harassed and hassled by these blockades.
But it's quite evident to me that the electoral compact of Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal for the parties of the left was we get to be sneering and self-righteous about climate, and Alberta can pay the price.
So they love the tech frontier shutdown.
They hate the blockades in their neck of the woods.
It's not supposed to happen that way.
I'm sort of mixing a couple of things there, but let me ask you the question I've been asking Albertans for months, really.
After Trudeau was re-elected, despite all his corruption, despite everything, the Wexit movement got a lot of attention.
And Jason Kenney basically said, well, I'm going to try and fix things from within.
But there was no or else.
So now, Justin Trudeau punches Jason Kenney in the mouth.
And where's the or else?
Transmountain pipeline is not going to be built.
So where's the or else?
And is anything going to change?
Are people just going to grouse a bit and go back to normal?
I mean, is anything going to happen here or is people just going to roll over again?
I don't know.
It's always tricky when people are economically vulnerable.
You know, we tend to think that revolutions happen when people are starving.
They tend to happen, actually, when they've started to get some food.
Most revolutions of the last 200 years have been middle-class revolutions, people whose economic power has exceeded their political power and they pushed for more power through revolution or at least through radical changes.
I don't know.
I don't know where we're going to go at this point.
It's a little early in the process.
But one of the things I am prepared to predict is the next time somebody decides to put a barricade or blockade on a rail line in Alberta, I don't think you can expect people like Guy Simpson, the unemployed oil worker who pulled down the one outside Emmett.
I don't think you can expect them to be polite.
I'm quite worried that people will say, look, there's absolutely no point in me being nice, in me being polite, in me being nonviolent, because every time we do what's asked of us, we're simply spat upon once again.
And there's a level of frustration in the province right now that I have never seen before.
Not even under the National Energy Project program with Trudeau's father.
Was it as high, I think, as it is now?
Well, there is one more thing.
You mentioned this just before we turn on the camera.
The Alberta Court of Appeal issued its ruling on the constitutionality of Trudeau imposing a carbon tax on Alberta.
Jason Kenney obviously opposed what Rachel Noli, his predecessor, supported.
And it was, to me, a surprising result.
I honestly hadn't followed it that closely.
Why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about it?
Because you've been following it a bit today.
It surprised me, too, for two reasons.
One, because the Court of Appeal said that the carbon tax was unconstitutional.
I didn't think they were going to do that.
The Constitution is quite clear that the federal government has the power to tax by any mode or method of taxation.
I thought they were going to get free and clear on that alone.
But the Court of Appeal, so Court of Appeal struck down the carbon tax.
Secondly, it overwhelmingly struck down.
I have not seen so clear and forceful a ruling from a court in a very long time.
They said, if the carbon tax law is allowed to go ahead, it will destroy federalism as it was intended in the Constitution.
It will make the provinces so submissive to the federal government that there'll be no point in having the provinces.
He said the provinces, the majority decision was written by a guy named Tom Wakeling.
And he said, the Constitution makes it clear that the federal government and the provincial government are equal levels of government within their own spheres of power, within their own spheres of authority.
And this seeks to intervene in a way never conceived of in the Constitution before to allow the feds to come in and make decisions in provincial jurisdiction by claiming that they're trying to solve the climate emergency.
And I really, I read the decision and my eyes were wide open.
It saved me from having one of the worst days I can remember as an Albertan based on the tech decision because I don't know where this is going to go.
It's going to go to the Supreme Court at some point.
There's one from Saskatchewan that went to the Fed's level.
There's one going on in Ontario right now, which I expect will go the Fed's way too.
And the Supreme Court's going to have to sort these all out.
But for now, here to the Alberta Court of Appeal.
Supreme Court Decision Looms00:04:13
Yeah.
Well, I'm pretty pessimistic what the Supreme Court's going to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I am too.
Today was a nice way to finish off a very, otherwise very bad day.
Yeah.
Well, it'll be interesting to see what happens next.
I look forward to hearing what our Alberta-based reporters, Kian and Sheila, see on the ground.
They're very much on the ground.
Sheila, especially, she interviewed Guy Simpson and some of his fellow blockade clearers.
We delivered them each, or Sheila did, a bunch of beer, which I thought was a fun thing.
And one of the guys, Zach Lamaru, was hit by a blockader.
So we have agreed to help him sue that blockader for assault.
So we're doing our, in a very small way, we're trying to push back against blockades.
Lauren, it's great to see you again.
Thanks for taking the time with us today.
Good to see you.
All right, there you have it.
Our friend Lauren Gunter, senior columnist with the Edmonton Sun, his piece in that newspaper today entitled Tech Frontier Cancellation, Entirely Trudeau's Fault.
Stay with us.
More ahead on The Rebel.
Hey, welcome back on my monologue Friday about Trudeau's bailout media wanting a crackdown on the non-bailout media.
Doug writes, the liberal cartel has duped the average Canadian into believing our media should be run by Trudeau, but paid by our hard-earned tax dollars.
Wake up, Canada.
Yeah, what's so gross about this is that it's all the other media now that are turning against the independent media.
They are literally doing Trudeau's bidding for him.
It's so gross.
Adrian writes, Canadian news sources seem to be between Iraq and a hard place.
Refuse government money and risk bankruptcy, or take the money and tow the party line.
Yeah, that would be a rock and a hard place if those were the only two alternatives.
I don't believe that we here at Rebel News are facing bankruptcy.
I mean, unless we were absolutely steamrolled by a whack of government prosecutions or something.
But even then, I think we would survive.
So I don't think it's bankrupt or bailout.
I think there's plenty of room for private sector media.
There are private sector media all around the world.
Many media make a lot of money.
I think that the reason why a lot of media are losing money is because they're so boring and liberal and predictable and vanilla.
Yeah, Trudeau wants to push us out of business, but he hasn't done so yet.
On my interview with Conservative Leadership Hopeful Dr. Leslie Lewis, Marion writes, I'm very favorably impressed.
She's articulate, confident, and willing to answer the tough questions.
Well, I'm glad you think so.
And we have invited all the leadership candidates to come and talk to us.
I think most of them are chickening out.
I think Peter McKay, I don't think he wants to.
I think we, I got to tell you, he really feels like a liberal to me.
Aaron O'Toole personally promised Kian that he'd do an interview with them, and he's been dodging him.
Hopefully, he'll do an interview.
And I think there's one other candidate whose name escapes me right now.
I'm sorry about that.
But yeah, I think the whole leadership contest is looking very depressing.
Gloria writes, I don't think much of her.
She is evasive on all the important issues.
Well, look, I didn't want to grill the woman in my first encounter with her.
I wanted to be a little bit more biographical.
She had some lines down pat, but on others, I just don't think that she is a seasoned political operator.
She's a lawyer and a businesswoman and a scholar, too.
I don't want to be too harsh on her, but I tend to agree.
I don't think that she could go toe-to-toe in a modern election campaign against Justin Trudeau and succeed, which is a very important test.
But I wish her good luck, and we'll see if the other conservative leadership candidates come through our doors.
I sort of doubt they will.
I think they know that we are conservative, and I don't quite see that yet in them.