Carney's not so strategic oil reserves and bad inflation news...

Plus the Full Dhanraj on Full Comment.

We have no strategic oil reserves, but magically we are going to release our oil reserves to assist the International Energy Agency. The 32 member countries of the IEA agreed last week to co-ordinate the release of 400 million barrels on an emergency basis to try and smooth over the recent price hike due to the war in Iran.

Canada agreed to offer up 23.6 million barrels but since we don’t have reserves, we are just going to be diverting production to the tune of 140,000 barrels per day in a short while.

“That will provide additional, not in the short term but in the medium term -- again, very low carbon oil in terms of production and transportation, which is one of the reasons why it’s attractive,” Carney told reporters over the weekend.

He was asked to explain why Canada doesn’t have strategic reserves but other countries do.

“The rules are you should have at least 90 days reserves for those importers. What we do is we provide oil to the global market. We will continue to do so because we are a safe, low-risk, low-cost, and increasingly low-carbon exporter,” he said.

A couple of things about his statement.

Note the ongoing emphasis on Canada’s low-carbon oil.

Also note that other countries that are oil producers do have oil reserves. It might be an idea for Canada to have some, at least enough to cover the imports that we use if they were to suddenly stop.

In 2024, Canadian oil imports amounted to between .52 million bpd up to .66 million bpd. Pretty much all of the oil used in Atlantic Canada is imported and so is most of the oil in Quebec and about 15-20% of oil in Ontario.

In total, as much as 25% of Canada’s oil supply is imported. Being able to cover that were it suddenly to get cut off would be a good idea.

More bad economic news for Carney…

On Sunday I posted about Carney’s first year as PM and detailed using economic data such as the horrible unemployment numbers that his first year wasn’t a roaring success.

Here’s part of what was behind the paywall:

We’ve added 347,300 new people to the working age population of 15 and older, this was almost exclusively done via immigration of one form or another. We have 51,800 more jobs than we did a year ago, we have 30,400 more people considered unemployed than a year ago and the labour participation rate has fallen by four points.

Almost all of that job growth, 49,900, came from the public sector rather than through the private sector.

So how on earth are these good things?

You could yell and scream and say this is all Donald Trump, but our unemployment rate last year before Trump was already 6.6%.

Today’s inflation numbers also were not good.

You most likely heard that core inflation in February was down to 1.8% but that was almost entirely due to gas prices and those have spike more than 20% across Canada since the war in Iran started.

Then there is food inflation.

Statistics Canada said right in their report that groceries are up more than 30% over the last five years.

You can read the details in my column for the Toronto Sun here and tomorrow I will send out my lengthy interview with Sylvain Charlebois, AKA The Food Professor once it is ready.

Oh, and Sylvain and I both agree that a city run grocery store is a horrible idea.

The Full Dhanraj on Full Comment…

This will be the best interview you will hear with Travis Dhanraj about his time at CBC and the problems at our state broadcaster.

You can listen here or anywhere you get your podcasts.

From the official show notes.

Travis Dhanraj is not who you’d expect from a CBC critic. He’s not a conservative. He supports public broadcasting. As the host of Canada Tonight, he championed diversity. But as he tells Brian, he eventually discovered how shallow the broadcaster’s commitment was to its proclaimed values and its mandate. He explains how political coverage was controlled by a handful of politically biased personalities exercising veto control over shows seeking conservative perspectives. He also tells Brian about the preposterous stunts the CBC used to pay lip service to its standards, the corporation’s degrading human resources practices, and the lack of accountability and transparency from the top that, once he dared to challenge it, had network executives trying to silence him. (Recorded March 12, 2026)