Saving The Planet, One Refusal After Another

"We are losing the war and we are losing the winning conditions that we have taken for granted for 100 years or more. [By] winning conditions I mean that you have a political culture and a political environment where your projects are welcomed and succeed subject to being good projects.
"We do not have those conditions in Quebec. Even a very good project three years ago was not welcomed. And I think we're seeing across the country some very good projects that are not welcome."
Michael Binnion, head, Quebec Oil and Gas Association

"Investors are very used to the risk of exploration. I mean often times you don't find the gas or oil. But we have never experienced this: That you find what  you are looking for [and then it doesn't get developed]. You find a pot of gold and you're not allowed to touch it."
Thomas Korsdalen, Norwegian investment bank Pareto Securities

Environmental intransigence, the pride of principle minus convincing scientific evidence leading to stubborn commitment? Might there be a slight psychological effluent of complacency; as long as the province's revenues are tidily kept to a threshold minimum, financial transfers known as 'equalization payments' will remain intact?

Whatever the reasons, and they could be a complex combination of various factors, including or excluding the above, the Province of Quebec is not open to investment in fossil fuel extraction.

This, despite that the geology of the province, a very large, expansive geographic area, is abundantly provisioned by nature with oil and gas, not a drop nor a whiff of it will be extracted by loathsome corporate profiteers if the province has any say in the matter. And it most certainly does.

Anti-hydrocarbon activism is alive and well in Quebec. The profit motive is not enough to persuade the province to cooperate with Quebec's Oil and Gas Association.

Social movements deploring growth in these sectors, declaring life far more beautiful when limits to growth are applied, appear to be winning the battle; industry is declaring itself stumped. "I think they are doing some good, getting us focused on what we could do better and should do better. But when we let the power to oppose become bigger than the power to propose, we have a problem in society. And [that is happening]", remarked a frustrated Michael Binnion.

"We have a real problem in our industry", he emphasized. Yes, we've noticed that. The global environment movement is thrilled with its successes and portrayals. It's difficult not to notice the lack of concordance between would-be developers and won't-be provincial profit. But it seems it is not to be. Strident environmentalism in the name of Holy Mother Earth has become the secular religion of Quebec, struggling against its deposed and forlorn Catholicism.

Strangely enough, Mr. Binnion's predecessor as president of Quebec Oil and Gas Association, formerly leader of the Official Opposition in the House of Commons with the separatist Bloc Quebecois, Lucien Bouchard himself said: "Society has invented a new religion". Billions of dollars of economic value and spin-off taxation through the mining and exploitation of the province's immense pools of ancient fossil fuel product is unrecoverable as a result of disinterest and refusals of the provincial government to give assent.

A moratorium on shale gas drilling and fracturing followed large public protest over safety and environmental concerns, and millions in market capitalization melted away.