"No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there" : Examining the hegemony of fossil fuels in the Trudeau government's discourse on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project

Abstract: As the world’s fifth largest oil producer, and holder of the third largest proven oil reserves, Canada is poised to significantly impact future global carbon emissions. The present government, under the leadership of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is seeking to simultaneously position itself as a global climate leader while supporting the exploitation of Canada’s extensive bitumen oil reserves. This support is exemplified, and pushed to an extreme, by the government's purchase in 2018 of the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project as an attempt to save the project from being shelved. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis applied to the current federal government’s speeches on the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, this thesis decrypts and dismantles the government’s use of discourse. This discourse functions to maintain the hegemony of fossil fuels in the era of global heating, while foreclosing on possibilities of leaving the fuels in the ground and reinforcing Canadian bitumen’s multi-dimensional carbon lock-in. Moreover, it reflects ecological modernist and environmental Kuznets curve tenets that serve to craft an apparent reconciliation between economic interests and environmental concerns. In effect, this use of discourse depoliticizes the social and environmental struggles surrounding bitumen extraction, including its global impact on climate change, and bolsters the hegemony of fossil fuels.