Welcome to the People Planet Prosperity Podcast. On today’s very first episode, Canada Action founder Cody Battershill sits down with Lynn Exner, Chief Operating Officer of Canada Action, to discuss Canada’s role in balancing increasing global resource demand with ongoing calls for environmental protection and sustainability. Canada’s national resources are critical not only to our economy, but also to the well-being of families and communities across the country. 

Today Cody and Lynn dive into these important issues, and talk about why the world needs more Canadian resources. They discuss the many reasons to be proud of Canadian natural resources, understanding and appreciating the men and women who work hard to extract these resources across the country, and Canada's innovative role in environmental, social, and governance regulations. Cody offers his thoughts on the national impact if we were to shut down our mining, forestry, oil and gas, and agriculture sectors, and finally, they explain the importance of working together so that we can take the best possible care of our people, our planet, and our prosperity as the demand for Canada’s natural resources only continues to grow moving forward. This episode was recorded on November 19th, 2021.

To learn more about supporting Canada’s vital natural resource sector, please visit CanadaAction.ca.

Episode Highlights:

• The importance of Canadian resources
• Genesis behind the “I Love Canadian Mining,” “I Love Canadian Mining and Gas” movement
• How understanding and appreciation for natural resources differs across provinces
• Being familiar with the value of different resources across the country can help mitigate fear and confusion, and bring people together to work toward common goals
• The power of hearing people’s stories to help humanize faces behind the industry - the men and women who are working hard to provide for their families and support their local communities
• The reason for choosing Canadian natural resource products
• Canada is leading on the environment, worker safety, human rights, social progress, resource governance, and the equitable distribution of those economic benefits
• HowCanadaRanks.com
• Canada’s innovation and guiding the way for other countries to follow suit (e.g., carbon capture utilization and storage technology)
• Familiarity with our resource sector will help people truly appreciate it and strive for continual improvement together
• Involvement of First Nations and Indigenous communities with forestry, mining, oil and gas industries
• The need for natural resources will only continue to grow in the coming years, and Canada will continue to play a pivotal role - we have the resources, the people, the innovation, and the know-how
• The impact on Canada if we were to lose our natural resource sectors
• The world needs the resources we have, and it’s important to work together to take care of our people, our planet, and our prosperity

Quotes:

“There was definitely not enough perspective on Canada's place in the world - how we live, where energy comes from, where food comes from, where houses come from, where iPhones and the internet [come from] - what makes it all possible. And I just didn't feel like there was enough pride, to be honest, in what we were doing and how we were doing it.”

“It's never about East versus West, or us versus them, or solar and wind versus oil and gas. It's not about breaking people apart. We need to be talking about bringing people together and reducing friction and polarization and misunderstandings and misinformation, to raise the level of decorum so that all provinces can truly understand what they have, and how fortunate those local communities are.”

“There are ways that we can mitigate our environmental impacts across all resource sectors and all resource production across the country that we continue to do. But we need to take the fear out of it.”

“We have to continually remember that when we talk about resources, we're talking about the women and men in these local communities, who are putting on their steel-toed boots and their hard hats and going to work.”

“Canada has a unique position in the world, to be able to provide the resources that are in demand, and with growing demand, from a position of environmental sustainability, and a position of continual improvement. And that’s really the Canadian way.”

“We can be really proud of our ability to share our innovation and our knowledge with other places so we can all improve.”

“We're not just producing resources just because - we're producing resources that are in demand.”

“If we shut down Canadian agriculture, we're going to be importing all of our food, and we're not going to have security, we're not going to have reliability, we're not going to have the best possible pricing with the highest possible environmental impact, highest possible environmental levels of production with the lowest possible impact.”

“It's important to note that we are not perfect, but we are always trying to get better. And that's really something we should be proud of.”

“We should be trying to understand people from different parts of our country, knowing that in every region, we are taking good care of our people, of our planet, and our prosperity. And the resources are part of that.”

Links:

Canada Action CanadaAction.ca