Canada’s Energy Security

During the second half of the 20th century, the West’s resource security – then as now, mostly based on oil – progressed from Strategy 1 toward Strategy 2. The world wars and the Cold War certainly showed the importance of controlling supplies of key resources, like iron and rubber. [...] And as for energy security, China is not a fuel supplier to the world market the way the U. S., Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia are. [...] This further grows the services-and-data content in energy supply, and adds various new layers of complexity to the energy security problem. [...] More and more of our energy systems’ investment is not in the what but in the how: better ways to transmit, process, control, protect, sell and apply energy. [...] Those strengths lie in our sophisticated natural resource processing; in legacy accumulations of science and technology (as in nuclear); in policy coherence (if and when we have it) and in the quality of our governance, regulation and safety culture.