Globalists have big plans for how the Canadian economy should reorganized, including elimination of free markets, top-down government, and elimination of fossil fuel use
By ROBERT LYMAN, National Post, April 03, 2025
“Globalization” was useful shorthand for the view that held sway in the 1980s and 1990s of a world of free and open markets and self-restraining governments. In many circles it has now been replaced by “globalism.”
Few Canadians follow the comings and goings of the major international organizations, like the UN and its agencies, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum or the Glasgow Alliance for Financial Net Zero, the organization Mark Carney launched in 2021. Yet these organizations and the members of Canada’s elite who participate in their meetings have over the past 15 years developed globalist plans for how the world economy should be reorganized.
The globalist vision calls for a massive transformation from a system based on “capitalist” or free-market institutions that accommodate growing populations and rising incomes with existing energy sources and technological innovation, to one in which governments, co-ordinated by international agencies, centrally plan and direct human activity.
Even though the world now relies on hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal) to meet 81 per cent of its primary energy needs, the globalist vision calls for the virtually complete elimination of hydrocarbon use in the more advanced countries, including Canada, by 2040 if possible, and certainly by 2050.
Eliminating hydrocarbons will make us poorer and less healthy
Essentially eliminating hydrocarbons means changes most people cannot even imagine today.
There would be no access to petroleum fuels for heating, cooking, lighting or transportation of goods and services. The use of petroleum to make products like ammonia, plastics, tires, insecticides, antiseptics, fertilizers, paint or detergents would be far more expensive and perhaps much more limited by supply constraints.
You would not be able to fly long distances (unless you were a president or prime minister). In fact, access to air travel would probably be rationed. The cost of transporting goods by truck and rail would rise well above current levels, raising the cost of everything shipped that way.
Every energy use would be electrified. All sources of electricity generation would be based on non-hydrocarbon sources, including bulk power storage, assuming the technology for it can be developed. Brownouts and blackouts would occur often. The real cost of electricity would triple or worse from current levels.
Every business, household and individual would be allocated a “carbon budget” indicating how much in the way of carbon dioxide-intensive goods and services they could consume each month. Businesses would have to comply with onerous reporting requirements.
Within cities and towns, people would be almost entirely dependent on walking, cycling and taking public transport to get around, no matter the season or weather. Meat on your table would be even rarer than it is today. With regulation and pricing, governments would ban modern herbicides and insecticides, demand the use of “natural” fertilizers, and promote increased use of “alternative proteins” such as meal worm potato chips, bug burgers instead of beef patties and meat sausages made from lake flies. Bon appétit!
Without modern fertilizer, food production will drop 40 per cent
Without modern fertilizers, global food production would decline by at least 40 per cent, causing the price of food to rise sharply everywhere. As is now happening in the Netherlands, governments would shut down livestock farms, either buying or expropriating them.
Large energy-intensive industries would be either shut down or radically downsized. Canada’s oil and gas industry would be decimated, as would its mining, petrochemicals, manufacturing, metal processing and auto industries.
The resulting loss of employment, especially in high-productivity, high-wage industries, would lead to a flight of both capital and labour to other countries — at a time, ironically, when “open-door” immigration policies would be encouraging the entry of millions of unskilled immigrants. The Canadian dollar would continue to fall, causing even more inflation and adding to the outflow. China, India and other developing countries would continue to grow their economies, energy use and emissions. More manufacturing would migrate there.
We’ll own nothing—but will we be happier?
Klaus Schwab, executive chairman of the World Economic Forum and perhaps the most prominent advocate of “the Great Reset,” is famous for the organization’s prediction that if the world follows the Forum’s lead, “You’ll own nothing and you will be happy.” Well, that gets it half right.
During the current election campaign, Canadians and their proxies in the press should be asking candidates whether they favour globalist policies. If we don’t ask, we’ll have only ourselves to blame for seeing this unappealing vision realized.
Robert Lyman is a retired energy economist.