Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Liberals have been caught red-handed time and time again bailing out the top corporations in Canada, while millions of workers struggle to get by with job losses and reductions in working hours and wages. To no one’s surprise, the oil and gas firms have been some of the biggest beneficiaries of this corporate welfare. It has come to light that during the height of the pandemic last year, the Trudeau government secretly gave $18 billion in bailouts to oil and gas companies. Lobbyists claimed the companies needed this money to help the oil and gas industry during the pandemic to save jobs and keep the economy afloat. In reality, these companies were using the pandemic to lobby for free handouts from the Liberal government. 

On the other hand, the government’s climate plan intends to invest $15 billion into sustainable initiatives—only this plan will be drawn out over 15 years. This flagrant act of hypocrisy tells us all we need to know about the Liberals’ “plan to phase out fossil fuels”, as well as their lack of commitment to the well-being of working people who have suffered the most during this pandemic. Environmental Defence reports that out of that $18 billion in fossil fuel subsidies, $3.28 billion would go to outright bailouts for oil and gas, while the remaining $13.47 billion would be funneled into oil and gas using the Crown corporation Export Development Canada. Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan justified these outrageous handouts by saying, “This is the biggest industry in the country. It’s our biggest export, so there is a lot on the line for everybody”—thereby claiming that it is in the interest of the working class to support government bailouts to prop up oil and gas barons.

In addition, O’Regan’s press secretary, Ian Cameron, claimed these handouts have “helped workers across the country—including oil and gas workers—put food on the table.”  However, in reality this has nothing to do with saving the jobs of working people, and everything to do with the capitalist state submitting to the demands of the oil lobby. While it is true that there are many workers in Canada who work in oil and gas, very little of this $18 billion will go to those workers themselves, nor is the government subsidizing the fossil fuel industry acceptable under the justification of “creating new jobs.”

Generally, according to the report done by Environmental Defense, “Fossil fuel industries create fewer jobs per unit of output than any other sector in the Canadian economy. Compared to funding for fossil fuels, clean stimulus creates nearly three times as many jobs for equivalent investments.” What this means is that instead of propping up oil and gas, all these billions of dollars could be spent funding the transition away from oil and gas, to more sustainable industries that would actually create more jobs and benefit more working people in the long-term. This money could be spent by helping Indigenous communities such as the Wet’suwet’en in B.C. and Tyendinaga Mohawks in Ontario, who have been on the forefront of the struggle against the oil and gas companies by defending the land from oil pipeline destruction. Most of this money, like the rest of the subsidies given to major corporations over the pandemic, is just going to be flushed down the toilet—given out to the oil bosses as dividends and used to line the pockets of the billionaire class, all while bailing out a failing industry that is making our planet unlivable. 

Throughout the pandemic it has been made extremely clear to millions of people in Canada that the capitalists are only concerned with making profits at the expense of the working class and the environment. Sustainable green industries are not being invested in by the capitalists because they are not profitable enough, or in some cases not profitable at all. The Liberal government consistently bails out the capitalists who are responsible for the destruction of the environment at the cost of the lives of working people. This cannot be changed under capitalism, because both the Liberals and Conservatives serve the ruling class, and as a result will never address the interests or the needs of society as a whole.

It is clear that the solution to these problems cannot be found within the logic of the capitalist system and the profit motive. In order to save jobs and create new ones, and transition away from fossil fuels towards renewable resources, we must nationalize the economy under democratic workers’ control. We must take these industries out of the hands of the bourgeoisie and transform the economy into one that is run by and for the working class in harmony with nature: as a socialist planned economy run for human need rather than greed.