A Challenge to Carney: Come on Energi Media and Let’s Talk Energy Policy

Support my request to interview Mark Carney. Contact information for the Prime Minister below

Canadian journalists are mad that Mark Carney gives interviews to big American news media while ignoring their requests for a sit-down. He’s ignored my requests, too. And I will argue here that mine are more important. Why? Because I want to ask him about policy details. About what the math actually says, not just the political narrative coming out of Ottawa. Given the massive public spending on a pipeline and the Alberta oil sands, for example, those conversations are long overdue.

Energi Media is in a unique position to have that conversation with the Prime Minister: we cover energy and economic policy through a global lens. Half our journalism is spent interviewing international experts like Oxford’s Jan Rosenow, while the other half asks how those insights apply to Canada.

Take the $44 billion, 1 million barrel per day Pacific Link pipeline that Ottawa will build with public funds. We’ve interviewed oil analysts who cover Asian energy issues. Dived into reports from respected organizations like the International Energy Agency. And downloaded datasets from the governments of China and India to stress test what we learned. Consequently, we’re warning that Asian oil demand is likely set to peak and decline early next decade.

Not the greatest time to buy Alberta a pipeline. The Prime Minister should explain his decision to support the project.

Another example: I’ve been writing about technology change for 40 years. This is handy because the fundamental driver of the current global energy transition is the switch from inefficient technologies that combust fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) to hyper-efficient technologies like EVs and heat pumps that are fuelled by electricity. From molecules to electrons. Energi Media even has its own energy transition theory of change.

At the risk of being immodest, a Canadian sin, we can reasonably say that no other journalist in Canada could question Dr, Mark Carney, he of the Oxford PhD. in economics, as I can.

And the Prime Minister should relish the opportunity to have that conversation. Let him show off how smart he is, how deeply versed in the data. Let him bring his math to the interview and share it with Canadians.

Carney apparently prefers long-form interviews where he can answer in-depth. Wonderful. That is Energi Media’s interview format. He can speak in whole paragraphs to his heart’s content.

Sure, he’ll answer tough, evidence-based questions. Has there ever been a prime minister better equipped to answer them?

I’ve stated our position on Carney for the past 18 months: great strategy (for the most part; not a fan of “energy superpower”), but many questions remain about policy implementation. He won’t be facing a hostile interviewer. Just one who may know the file as well, or better, than he does.

What Are Canadian Journalists Saying?

The Toronto Star’s Justin Ling  says that “Carney believes Canadian media is too fixated on process and misses the forest for the trees.” Ling concedes that the prime minister has a point. But he also argues that Carney and his team in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) closely follow Canadian coverage and are sensitive to criticism. One way to avoid criticism is to bypass domestic journalists. Carney’s “Forward Guidance” YouTube videos, for example.

Those videos offer a glimpse of the policy communicator behind the prime minister. “My goal,” he says, “is to explain as plainly as I can what we’re doing as your government, why we’re doing it and what we’re working to achieve.”

That is a worthwhile ambition. But, rest assured, plenty of questions could be asked of those explanations.

For example, last week’s heat pump program will affect just 10 per cent of annual Canadian residential heating system replacements. How does that modest ambition square with the loudly proclaimed goal of the Carney Government’s electricity strategy to electrify the national economy? What about commercial and industrial operations, which account for just under one-half of Canada’s building energy consumption?

Canadians deserve explanations that go beyond slogans and political theatre. But a prepared address lets Carney choose both the questions and the answers. An interview adds something essential: someone who can challenge an assumption, introduce inconvenient data, and ask him to explain why his policy still makes sense.

That’s what Energi Media offers. But one can also see the attraction of the PMO’s approach. Veteran journalist George Froehlich makes an interesting point: Carney’s combination of major foreign interviews and controlled YouTube addresses is an effective communications strategy.

He doesn’t need the Canadian press. Froehlich also observes that Canadian reporters too often waste precious prime ministerial time with frivolous political questions.

Ouch. But Froehlich is right.

In my experience, the Canadian energy conversation is very different, far more parochial and inward-focused, than those in Europe and Asia, even the United States. That’s partly because Canadian journalists rarely ask about energy issues outside Canada’s borders. They haven’t done the work to ask hard questions. Watching veteran reporters from the big outlets, the only ones that get to ask questions, lob eephus pitches at a Carney press conference is…frustrating.

The Energi Media Audience

Froehlich made an interesting observation about Carney’s first Forward Guidance video: “It drew more than 500,000 views, a number most Canadian political programs would envy.”

Only half a million? Energi Media interviews with Andrew Coyne drew a full million. Twice. Professor Robert A. Pape, University of Chicago, attracted a million. Plenty of other experts have matched Carney’s viewership.

I rarely publicly discuss our audience numbers, but in a typical month, Energi Media’s videos are viewed by six to seven million people, most of them Canadians; a soft month would be three to four million. In addition, Substack provides 100,000 readers. Traffic from other platforms probably adds a few hundred thousand more.

That’s about to change. We’re almost finished building a digital newsroom that, as far as we can tell, will be the first of its kind. Already it has enlarged our audience. It should be fully functioning in a few months. The goal is to double, ideally to triple, our audience over the next few years.

These are extraordinary times for Canada and the world, and a timid press is no friend of democracy. We currently punch above our weight class. With the digital newsroom, we hope to move up at least a few divisions.

All of which is to say that agreeing to Energi Media interviews is in Mark Carney’s own interests. The Prime Minister is a remarkably gifted man. Intelligent, well-educated, and possessed of global and national experience that few Canadians can rival. If he can manage a New York Times interview, then he’s not about to be knocked off his pins during one with me, for goodness sake.

But he runs a serious risk if he continues to micro-manage Canadian media. My friend Max Fawcett of the National Observer often makes this point during our video conversations: prime ministers must actively manage the political constituencies that support their policies.

Justin Trudeau failed miserably on this front, argues Max. He would introduce unpopular policies like the oil and gas emissions cap, then not put in the work – or delegate that work to a competent minister – to build support for them. Another example of a red-headed policy stepchild is the national carbon tax. Good idea, poor political execution.

So, I have a challenge for the Prime Minister: shed the bubble wrap. Come on my show, for as long as you want, and let’s talk about your policy math. My audience is as friendly as it gets, and they want to hear about your strategies and how you plan to implement them.

Leave the political narratives on Parliament Hill. Let’s have an old-fashioned policy wonk-fest. Canadians will appreciate it.

To my audience: please support my request for an interview with the Prime Minister by writing, calling, or emailing:

• Online: Use the Prime Minister’s contact form to support an Energi Media interview.
• By mail: Office of the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON K1A 0A2.
• By phone: Call the Prime Minister’s Office at 613-992-4211