Those who lobby for the fossil fuel industry claim that millions of Canadian jobs depend on the oil. Jim Stanford writes that the notion that Canada's economy is deeply dependent on oil is simply misinformation:
It is now undeniable: fossil fuels will disappear from most uses in the foreseeable future. And fossil-fuel industries will never again be an engine of economic growth and job creation in Canada.
Conventional wisdom portrays Canada as fundamentally dependent on extraction and export of natural resources – and fossil fuels are presently the biggest of these “staple” products. In hopes of delaying the inevitable, fossil-fuel lobbyists make exaggerated claims of their importance to the labour market, and predict economic disaster if their businesses are not protected and subsidized.
The statistical reality, however, is very different: fossil-fuel jobs constitute a very small portion of overall employment in Canada – less than 1 per cent. Their importance was already fading rapidly before COVID-19 hit. From 2014 through 2019, fossil-fuel industries lost 33,000 jobs, and their already-small share of total employment fell by one-quarter. Yet over the same period, Canada’s overall labour market strengthened steadily – achieving a record-low unemployment rate in 2019.
We are in a period of transition. But we have time to transition from an oil economy to a green energy economy:
The phase-out of fossil fuels will occur over decades, and that gives us time to plan for effective and fair employment transitions. We can enlist the normal mechanisms of change and adjustment that occur all the time in Canada’s diverse, fluid labour market, including retirements, voluntary entries and exits, interregional mobility, and job creation in growing industries.
The sooner we start planning for this transition, the easier it will be. For example, most existing fossil-fuel workers will retire over the next two decades, because they are older, on average, than the typical worker. By planning ahead, that natural turnover can take care of most of the gradual downsizing required. Senior workers in various locations can be encouraged to retire with incentives. Younger employees can keep working as the industry downsizes. Experience in other jurisdictions (such as Germany’s 20-year shutdown of black-coal mining) proves this can occur without a single involuntary layoff.
The hard part is accepting the notion that the fossil fuel industry is itself an economic fossil.
Image: The Guardian
