Adaptability - The Key to 2026
Sitting on my couch last week, a friend of mine glanced over at the small library accumulated in my living room and noticed a few of Daniel Yergin’s titles sitting there - The New Map, and The Quest - and she asked if they were worth reading. I described to her that I stumbled upon Yergin by coincidence, but that his books have given me a great deal of context on energy and its integration with geopolitical history. For better and for worse, these have significant implications for Canada’s energy and carbon policy.
We’re living in an era of abrupt change. Off the top of my head, in my professional lifetime we’ve seen the energy price crash of 2014-15, Trump’s first election in 2016, the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Russia’s war with Ukraine erupting in 2022, the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel in 2023 followed by its own war, Trump’s re-election in late 2024, the Iran-Israel war in 2025, the swift rise of AI to common vernacular within the last two years, and as of yesterday, the United States’ deposition of Maduro in Venezuela, using freedom as a pretext for expanding access to heavy oil.
Over this same period, on the Canadian policy front, we saw a raft of carbon and energy policies released and implemented – provincially and federally - and saw several of them get axed by Mark Carney’s government once elected. We’re inevitably in for more changes this year, with comment periods for industrial carbon pricing and the Clean Fuel Regulations underway until the end of January, and possible changes to the rollout of Clean Electricity Regulations pending a formalized deal with Alberta flowing from the MOU published this past November.
In this era, adaptability to change is inevitably the key to success. But here’s the kicker: change is hard. It never happens at the pace you want it to.
Responding to new policy signals takes time. Diversifying trade relationships takes time. Building momentum takes time.
I spent a short stint many years ago working for an investment firm where I still hold strong ties – Canso. Its namesake is an aircraft that flew a range of missions during and after World War II. In their own words, the namesake represents ruggedness, endurance and flexibility, hallmarks of their investment strategy. Tidalbreak is most certainly influenced by that spirit.
We take the world as it is – while working towards what we’d like it to be. We work on bridging gaps, knowing that they will lead to new horizons.
We’ll be watching closely – and pushing where we think it’s of most significance – as 2026 unfolds.
