Why Canadians Should Worry About Trump’s Attack on Golden State Wind

Government institutions should be boring and predictable, not subject to one politician's whim or ideology

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Donald Trump hates wind turbines, his prejudice rooted in a long-ago legal battle over a Scottish offshore project he claimed marred the view from his golf course. Quashing a Canadian pension fund-backed California offshore wind project didn’t come as a complete surprise. But the accompanying White House demand—for the company to invest $120 million in American hydrocarbon projects—was shocking. It shouldn’t be. This is another example of Trump’s “ungoverning” strategy.

Two takeaways for Canadians:

One, this is one more data point in Canada’s education about how trade with the US functions under Trump. Like a series of real estate deals. Transactional, capricious, and ultimately determined by how much leverage Trump thinks he has. Pierre Poilievre’s claim that he could negotiate a better trade deal with Mark Carney can’t be taken seriously.

Two, ungoverning is creeping into Canada. Alberta is the Trojan horse. Smith’s moratorium on wind and solar, followed by new rules that effectively killed further expansion, is comparable to what Trump is doing.

What matters here is the erosion of predictable, rules-based governance in favour of discretionary political intervention. Investors can adapt to stricter regulations, higher royalties, or slower approvals if the rules are transparent and consistently applied. What they cannot price is arbitrary power exercised for ideological or political reasons.

That is what makes the Golden State Wind case important. It is a glimpse into how ungoverning works under both the Trump Administration and Alberta’s UCP, and what might be coming for the rest of Canada.

What is Ungoverning?

Ungoverning does not mean the disappearance of government. In many cases, the state actually becomes more aggressive, more interventionist, and more centralized.

What changes is the role institutions play inside the political system. Instead of acting as relatively neutral administrators of stable rules, they become tools for rewarding allies, punishing opponents, and advancing ideological goals. The forms of governance remain intact, but their function changes.

That distinction matters because modern economies depend heavily on predictability. Investors, businesses, municipalities, and citizens make long-term decisions based on the assumption that laws, regulations, and administrative processes will be applied consistently across sectors and political identities. Democracies cannot function efficiently if every election transforms regulatory systems into partisan weapons.

When governments begin using discretionary power to selectively intervene in markets or civic life, uncertainty spreads far beyond the immediate targets. This is why ungoverning is so corrosive. It weakens trust not only in particular leaders, but in institutions themselves. Citizens begin assuming that rules are flexible, selectively enforced, or politically manipulated. Businesses shift from competing through productivity and innovation to competing for political favour. Public administration becomes personalized.

And eventually, politics stops being about governing a shared system and becomes a continuous struggle over who gets access to state power and who gets excluded from it.

Why Golden State Wind is an Example of Ungoverning

Golden State Wind was supposed to be part of California’s massive offshore wind buildout, backed by international investors that included Canadian pension fund capital. The project secured leases and entered the lengthy federal permitting process under the assumption that the United States still operated according to relatively stable investment rules.

Then the Trump administration intervened.

Offshore wind approvals were frozen, political hostility toward renewables intensified, and projects already deep in development suddenly faced existential uncertainty. That alone would have been disruptive enough. Energy investors understand that elections have consequences.

What transformed the Golden State Wind dispute into something more significant was the White House demand attached to compensation negotiations.

The developers were told they could recover roughly US$120 million only if they committed an equivalent investment into American hydrocarbon projects. That is not normal. The government should not be pressuring private investors to back politically favoured industries.

The American state, it appears, is no longer a neutral regulator overseeing competing industries under transparent rules. Instead, it is using executive power to steer investment toward industries aligned with Trump’s economic and ideological agenda. Regulatory institutions still exist, but their purpose shifts from administering neutral rules to selectively rewarding allies and punishing disfavoured sectors.

That is the essence of ungoverning: weakening institutional consistency while concentrating political power in the executive’s ability to intervene unpredictably in economic and civic life.

Poilievre, Carney, and CUSMA

Golden State Wind exposes the fantasy at the centre of Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre’s argument that he could negotiate a substantially better trade relationship with Donald Trump than Prime Minister Mark Carney.

That claim assumes Trump approaches trade like a conventional rules-based negotiator working within the spirit of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). But Trump does not see trade agreements as binding frameworks between equal partners. He treats them like temporary leverage instruments, useful only insofar as they can extract concessions or produce political advantage.

That changes the strategic environment for Canada.

Under a rules-based system, governments negotiate from established principles, dispute mechanisms, and predictable economic interests. Under Trump’s version of transactional politics, outcomes depend far more on personal leverage, political alignment, and the president’s shifting priorities.

The Golden State Wind case demonstrates how quickly stable investment assumptions can evaporate when executive power becomes personalized and discretionary. Canadians should understand this clearly before imagining that a different tone, ideology, or negotiating style in Ottawa would fundamentally alter the nature of the relationship.

Smith Ungoverning Alberta

What makes the Golden State Wind story uncomfortable for Canadians is that elements of this same political logic are already visible in Alberta.

For example, Premier Danielle Smith’s moratorium on new wind and solar approvals in 2023 was initially presented as a temporary pause to study land use, reclamation, and grid reliability. But the regulations and policy changes that followed imposed new restrictions on renewable projects, which made future investment far more difficult. The message to investors was unmistakable: politically favoured industries—like oil and gas— would receive support and regulatory flexibility, while politically inconvenient industries would face heightened scrutiny and shifting rules.

Again, the issue is not whether governments should regulate energy development. Of course they should. Alberta has every right to shape its electricity system according to provincial priorities.

The concern is the gradual replacement of stable, transparent governance with selective intervention driven by ideology and political identity. Investors can manage carbon policy, royalties, and environmental rules when they are predictable. What creates uncertainty is the perception that access to markets increasingly depends on whether an industry aligns with the governing party’s political narrative.

That is how ungoverning spreads. Not through the elimination of institutions, but through their transformation into instruments of discretionary political power.

In some respects, Smith operates with more practical governing freedom than Trump does. Canada’s Constitution concentrates significant power in the hands of majority governments. This is especially for provinces, where constitutional authority over natural resources and electricity systems is extensive.

Unlike Trump, Smith does not face the same level of institutional friction from Congress, states, or a fragmented executive branch. She commands a legislative majority, controls the cabinet, and operates inside a system designed to allow governments to implement policy efficiently once elected.

That is precisely why the Alberta case matters. If Smith demonstrates that ungoverning enables her to implement her authoritarian libertarian agenda, then expect other provinces to follow her lead.

Ungoverning and Canada

The danger here is not simply bad policy. Democracies survive bad policy all the time. The danger is the gradual normalization of arbitrary power exercised through institutions that still appear democratic on the surface.

Once governments begin treating regulations, permits, investment approvals, and trade agreements as political weapons, trust in the system itself begins to erode. Citizens stop believing rules apply equally. Investors stop assuming long-term stability. Politics becomes less about governing a shared society and more about controlling the machinery of the state.

That is why the Golden State Wind story matters beyond wind turbines.

The story reveals an emerging governing philosophy spreading across parts of the Western world: institutions exist not to constrain power, but to deploy it selectively in pursuit of ideological goals.

Canadians should pay close attention. Ungoverning is not some uniquely American pathology unfolding safely across the border. Elements of it are already visible here at home.