OTTAWA/WASHINGTON — Canada has the resources to strengthen Western energy security, generate enormous wealth and help shield its allies from overseas crises. Instead, energy scholar Brenda Shaffer argues, it is constraining its own production while deepening its dependence on China.
That warning runs through a wide-ranging conversation on The Bureau Podcast, in which Shaffer connects the politics of pipelines and electric vehicles to a larger struggle over industrial power, military readiness and the infrastructure needed to compete in artificial intelligence.
Her central contention is this. Western governments have become too willing to treat energy as a statement of climate virtue, overlooking the strategic consequences of who produces it, who controls the equipment that moves it, and who can interrupt the supply.
“Canada not only could do something great for global security by upping its production, building its infrastructure, but can make a lot of money,” she told me.
Shaffer, a faculty member with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School’s Energy Academic Group, joined the podcast to discuss the arguments behind her recent Bureau columns. Her assessment of Canada was blunt and underlines what I also believe.
A resource-rich country with an educated population and considerable scientific capacity should be turning those advantages into greater prosperity and security. With wise stewardship of its resources, Canada could become a global energy superpower, strengthen its sovereignty and command greater influence on the world stage.
Instead, she sees a country particularly vulnerable to the intersection of Chinese influence, international climate politics and domestic resistance to energy development.
“China’s infiltration of Canada … is probably greater than most countries in the West,” Shaffer said.
The conversation ranged from Greta Thunberg’s activism to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s financial-policy legacy. But Shaffer repeatedly returned to one question: what happens when Western countries restrict their own strategic capabilities while their competitors keep building?
For Shaffer, Thunberg’s emergence as a prominent pro-Palestinian activist provides an entry point into what she calls the “Red Green Green Alliance.”
In her formulation, the first element encompasses the radical left and China; the second, Islamist movements; and the third, climate organizations. She argues that these constituencies can converge around campaigns that weaken Western institutions and strategic interests, even when their participants have different motivations.
“So much of this activity is interconnected, funded, and serves a much larger agenda of weakening the West,” she said.
Shaffer said she became interested in these connections through her work on energy policy, rather than through an initial focus on protest movements.
Her suspicions sharpened as she watched environmental organizations praise China’s green leadership despite its heavy reliance on coal. She began asking why groups committed to reducing fossil-fuel use were so enthusiastic about a country whose industrial strength remained closely tied to it.
She also pointed to the rapid mobilization of pro-Palestinian demonstrations after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel—the subject of her Bureau column on what she calls the “October Eighth Alliance.”
In the interview, she described similar messaging across demonstrations in Canada and other Western countries, and the participation of unions, left-wing groups and climate organizations. In her assessment, this reflected an established organizing infrastructure capable of mobilizing quickly.
She explicitly said she did not believe those networks necessarily had advance knowledge of the attacks.
Canada, Shaffer argued, presents a particularly receptive environment for these overlapping red-green currents.
She cited Chinese influence, Canada’s strong identification with international institutions and the political appeal of presenting the country as a global climate leader. In her view, those tendencies can make Canadians less attentive to whether policies promoted as international cooperation also advance Beijing’s interests.
Carney sits at the centre of her critique.
Before becoming prime minister, he helped launch the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero in 2021, an initiative intended to accelerate the transition to a net-zero economy. Michael Bloomberg subsequently joined as co-chair.
Shaffer argues that the broader movement to steer financing away from fossil fuels discouraged investment in energy supplies the world continued to need. The consequence, in her assessment, is greater exposure to shortages and price shocks when wars or other disruptions hit.
She rejects the idea that favouring energy security requires opposing renewable energy.
“I consider myself fuel neutral,” she said.
Her preferred approach begins with a country’s resources, climate, population, economy and strategic requirements, then determines which combination of fuels and technologies best meets those needs. Renewables can be part of that mix.
What she opposes is using financial and regulatory pressure to make existing energy sources scarce or expensive before adequate replacements are available.
China’s industrial strategy, she argued, exposes the weakness of that approach.
Beijing can manufacture renewable-energy equipment using a coal-heavy electricity system, export that equipment and gain both revenue and influence as Western countries become increasingly dependent on Chinese supply chains.
The discussion turned to Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive whose comments about China’s supposedly abundant renewable energy were the focus of another Shaffer column.
For Shaffer, Schmidt illustrates how even sophisticated technology leaders can absorb an incomplete picture of the energy system supporting China’s rise.
She urged listeners to distinguish electricity from total energy supply, which also includes fuels used in transport, heating and industrial production. The Energy Institute’s 2026 review reports that fossil fuels accounted for approximately 86 per cent of global total energy supply in 2025, under its accounting methodology.
Her warning about dependence becomes more immediate when the discussion moves from fuel to war and the connected equipment that moves war supply chains.
Shaffer singled out electricity inverters—the devices that convert electrical power for use on the grid—as a potential vulnerability. She argued that compromised energy infrastructure could disrupt military operations before an adversary ever needed to attack a ship or aircraft.
“You don’t have to shoot down a plane near Taiwan,” she said, noting that China may be able to stop military vessels from leaving American bases and ports.
She applies the same security lens to connected vehicles and port equipment: Chinese access could enable surveillance, data theft or interference with critical operations. The threat has precedents. Western security agencies have identified Volt Typhoon as an effort to position Chinese hackers inside U.S. critical infrastructure for potential disruption during a crisis, while Salt Typhoon has penetrated telecommunications networks worldwide—including in Canada—for espionage.
Those concerns form the basis of her opposition to Canada’s opening for Chinese electric vehicles. Shaffer questions whether the economic benefits justify the strategic exposure.
Shaffer also sees the struggle over energy development expanding into a contest over data centres.
She argues that resistance to the infrastructure needed for artificial intelligence could become another self-imposed Western disadvantage while China expands its own capacity. She sees overlap with earlier anti-fossil-fuel campaigns.
The broader point, she said, is that energy policy now determines far more than electricity prices. It helps determine which countries can manufacture, compute, defend themselves and withstand disruption.
Her prescription for Canada is to build.
Expand production. Develop the infrastructure needed to move energy to market. Help diversify global supplies so that fewer countries depend on vulnerable maritime chokepoints or a small number of suppliers.
Wars and disruptions, she argued, are foreseeable features of the international system. Governments should prepare for them rather than treat each crisis as an unforeseeable explanation for policy failure.
For Canada, that means treating its resource base as an asset capable of serving both national prosperity and allied security.
Shaffer closed with a pointed observation about a country she described as beautiful, highly educated and extraordinarily well endowed.
With those advantages, she suggested, prosperity and security ought to follow.
“You’ve got to work really hard,” she said, “for that not to happen.”
