Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg’s ‘sustainable’ scheme to dismantle Canada’s economy

Peter Foster

It is a key weapon in the supposedly inevitable ‘transition to a low-carbon economy.’ As such it represents a particular threat to Canada

This week, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, CAPP, holds its Scotiabank Energy Symposium in Toronto. The symposium is designed to bring the industry together with investors. It will be intriguing to see how much discussion — if any — there is about “sustainable finance.” Never heard of the concept? Well, consider the following.

It is 2028. We have come a long way since “the dark years preceding the grand transition,” when the global financial system had been pushing the world towards the climate precipice by investing in fossil fuels. The Fundamental Principles of Sustainable Finance were finally adopted at the UN Summit on Global Financial Governance in 2025. Despite “some last resistance from a few jurisdictions,” financial regulators and standard setters now acknowledge that “the purpose of the finance system is to serve the needs of sustainable development.”

A worldwide “clean air” campaign has led to the mass deployment of electric vehicles financed by “blockchain-assured green bonds.” Unspecified climate problems have led to the downgrade of an unnamed sovereign bond, in the wake of which governments, investors and credit rating agencies introduced a trillion-dollar program “that invested upfront in real resilience.” Carbon-intensive companies have been sued into submission by a “seemingly endless series of legal cases.” Stocks and bonds that don’t meet UN standards have been dismissed from stock indices, although this reportedly led to a “transition tantrum.” Meanwhile “rapid dietary change” has resulted in the stranding of fishing and agriculture assets. There are now Nobel Prizes in sustainable economics. Green infrastructure is being go-fund-me’d. Sustainable finance rules.

I’m not making this up. The above scenario comes from a 2017 report, “Making Waves,” by the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP. Normal people might be inclined to write it off as the impossible dream/nightmare of wonkish far-left global governors, but sustainable finance has been embraced by Canada and many other countries, and is being promoted by a powerful cabal of regulators, billionaires, capitalist foundations and environmental non-governmental organizations, ENGOs. Its point man is Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, head of the Financial Stability Board, FSB, and former governor of the Bank of Canada. Its most prominent billionaire supporter is media mogul Michael Bloomberg.

Sustainable finance is a key weapon in the supposedly inevitable “transition to a low-carbon economy.” As such it represents a particular threat to Canada, where demonization of “dirty” oil has already resulted in pipeline delays and capital flight. Its suite of tactics include “voluntary” corporate disclosure to ENGO overseers of greenhouse gas emissions, along with show-trial-like confessions of what worst-case weather scenarios might look like. This is linked to ENGO-masterminded campaigns of pressure on investors to divest fossil fuel assets. Then come ENGO-initiated climate lawsuits, along with co-opting of regulators.

However, the inconvenient truth for the shock troops of climate finance is that if climate risks were quantifiable, and likely to have a material impact any time in the foreseeable future, they would already be incorporated into financial reporting. Also, if there were profits to be made in renewable energy and climate resilient infrastructure, investors would not need to be “crowded in” by scare tactics.

Sustainable finance, like all parts of the UN global governance agenda, has spawned a plethora of institutions, processes, studies, initiatives and funding mechanisms, all of which tend to operate well out of the public view.

In the next month or so, a federally-appointed “Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance” is due to deliver a final report. Set up by Ottawa early in 2018, the panel delivered an interim report last fall which received virtually zero media coverage. The chairman of the panel is Tiff Macklem, Dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and former number two to Mark Carney at the Bank of Canada. Its other members are Andy Chisholm, a board member of the Royal Bank of Canada; Kim Thomassin of the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec; and Barbara Zvan, from the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

When the panel was announced in April of 2018, it was sold as being all about helping Canada tap into a “trillion-dollar opportunity from clean growth and climate action” and creating “good jobs for Canada’s middle class.” Nothing was said about killing fossil fuels.

The exercise kicked off with a “round table discussion” hosted by Catherine McKenna, minister of Environment and Climate Change, and Bill Morneau, minister of finance. The star attendee was Mark Carney.

full story at https://business.financialpost.com/opinion/peter-foster-mark-carney-and-michael-bloombergs-sustainable-scheme-to-dismantle-canadas-economy