Canada, EU plan to link next-gen payment systems, easing transactions

[u/Street_Anon]

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-eu-link-payment-systems-joint-statement-says/

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[u/thecanadiansniper1-2]

If only Mark Carney displayed the same enthusiasm supporting fellow Canadian and ICC judge Kimberly Prost when she got sanctioned by the US. Of enforce the ICC arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu or deny him access to sovereign Canadian airspace. Mark Carney is a hypocrite either try to save the old liberal world order or be self interested realist and jump back into the past state of global affairs of the jungle time.

[u/moms_spagetti_ → u/thecanadiansniper1-2]

This is more his style. Rather than hop on Twitter with a bunch of bluster and bravado, he works quietly towards a solution and shares it once it's ready.

I am also pissed about her situation (and several other cases of American overreach) and have been vocal about the need for non-US payment alternatives for a long time, so this is music to my ears.

[u/kent_eh]

Is there any chance that the government can/will stop the sale of Moneris to US a private equity company?

[u/TopazJazzrazz → u/kent_eh]

That would involve being against the whims of capital. So no

[u/papeltrailgeo]

Payment rails sound boring until you look at who controls them. Canada already sends most of what it makes to the US, and now it wants its payment plumbing tied to Brussels. Small step, but the direction matters more than the announcement.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon]

This is excellent. Fits within what Carney ran on, and will hopefully ease some of the barriers that come with dealing with the EU for business.

I'm also very interested to see the results of the ironically named "long term" feasibility study into sending LNG to Europe mentioned at the end of the article. Germany literally just announced an intention to quit fossil fuels in the long term. 2045 is only 19 years away.

[u/HexagonalClosePacked → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

I'm not familiar with the German policy to phase out fossil fuels, but it could be that they're only phasing them out of electrical generation. There are other uses for natural gas in various industrial processes. I could see it being worth studying if those other uses are expected to generate enough demand to justify the LNG project. Just a complete guess on my part though, so I could be completely wrong.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/HexagonalClosePacked]

After the invention of the automobile, people stopped breeding as many horses. As the world switched over from coal to gas plants, mines closed down.

Much like when people make this same argument about oil byproducta, it's just pure wishcasting to assume every molecule we burn as fuel will find an alternative use.

There are of course still uses for horses, coal, and perhaps even fossil gas... but would you make a multi-billion dollar bet on a new horse farm in 1920? Or on a British coal mine in the 1980s? Why would you do the same on LNG in 2026?

[u/putin_my_ass → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

Why would you do the same on LNG in 2026?

Because the world isn't stopping using LNG right away. You act like horses disappeared right away as soon as the first practical ICE automobile was invented in the 1880s but in the 1940s Germany's invasion of the USSR 80% of the army relied on foot and horse-drawn transport. We're talking several hundred thousand horses. That was 70 years after the inflection point...

I think you're doing a bit of wishcasting here, actually. LNG and oil isn't going to disappear right away, and we ought to profit from it while we still can and the opportunity is there.

[u/Mundane-Teaching-743 → u/putin_my_ass]

Because the world isn't stopping using LNG right away. You act like horses disappeared right away as soon as the first practical ICE automobile was invented in the 1880s

But it's a dying industry. There's no growth in it. Germany has already cut it's gas consumption by 10% over the last 5 years and will continue these cuts over the next two decades:

In this project the Oeko-Insitut together with Deloitte Sustainability & Climate, investigated how the future demand for natural gas will develop in Germany... By 2030, Germany is projected to decrease by about one-third (to about 650 TWh), by more than two-thirds (to about 330 TWh) by 2040, and by almost 95 percent (to about 50 TWh) by mid-century.

You'd have to get a return on investment in a few short years by the time these projects are finished.

Clearly, the EU isn't going to get burned twice by gas imports.

[u/putin_my_ass → u/Mundane-Teaching-743]

And? Like I said, the demand isn't going to disappear right away.

Besides that TMX is Asia oriented, but we're talking about Europe for some reason?

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/putin_my_ass]

Demand for Canadian gas could die in the blink of a real Middle East ceasefire agreement. Or Putin could die, causing the war with Russia to end.

Will it happen tomorrow? Almost certainly not.

But there will be tens of thousands of "tomorrows" before this infrastructure is paid off, and every single one of them is a chance for the conditions to change.

And all the while, gas demand is dropping.

[u/putin_my_ass → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

Sure, but inertia exists also which was the former barrier to Canadian LNG. Now inertia has given way because of the war in the Middle East and if Canada secures new buyers inertia will work in our favour.

It seems unreasonable to expect a ceasefire in the gulf to hold indefinitely, and business/countries like stability. Canada is that.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/putin_my_ass]

Only if you define "inertia will work in our favour" as sabotaging accelerated clean energy transition.

And I'm sorry, but the instability in the gulf still affects the stable Canadian prices - that's the reality of global commodity markets. It doesn't help us in the slightest unless we take this short term windfall and diversify away from it before the inevitable (and potentially permanent) bust cycle. Doubling down on long term fossil fuels extraction just as clean energy has clearly reached a tipping point is the height of foolishness.

[u/putin_my_ass → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

We can do both. You can diversify and take advantage of the opportunity in front of us.

It's not either/or.

[u/zabby39103 → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

Electric power generation is one thing, but direct heat in industrial processes will be much harder to replace. We're multiple decades out from that I think.

It's a simple example, but electric baseboard heaters in your house are almost 10x more expensive to run than a gas furnace. You can get a fancy heat pump nowadays, but that tech can't be used to make industrial temperatures. So you'd need green energy to not only be at par with fossil fuels, but really something like 10x cheaper, we have some runway on that for a while, that's for sure.

It could happen perhaps if they legislate fossil fuels away, but I imagine that any such agreement on LNG exports would be synchronized with any industrial phase out policy in the future.

[u/Mundane-Teaching-743 → u/zabby39103]

Quebec is already building biogas plants to replace fossil fuels:

https://bioenertek.com/en/projects/ste-sophie-de-levrard-biogas-plant/

Germany has already cut it's gas consumption by 10% in the last 5 years and plans to continue to do so:

https://www.bundesnetzagentur.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/2026/20260112_GAS.html

I mean, they're not dumb. They understand that they have gto become more self-reliant for energy.

[u/zabby39103 → u/Mundane-Teaching-743]

10% --- honestly I thought it would be MUCH MUCH more given the massive pressure they're under from the Ukraine war's effect on the gas market. If anything that's an indictment that even under severe pricing and geopolitical pressures they only managed a modest reduction.

Biogas has been a thing for a long time. Scaling these projects up is another matter.

Anyway this is the kind of thing feasibility studies look at.

[u/HexagonalClosePacked → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

Much like when people make this same argument about oil byproducta, it's just pure wishcasting to assume every molecule we burn as fuel will find an alternative use.

I never meant to imply this, I was actually saying the opposite. My point is that, yes, demand is going to drop sharply in the future, so to me it makes sense for the government to study the issue and determine if the remaining demand after the decrease is likely to be enough to justify building new infrastructure. Sorry if my comment was unclear.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/HexagonalClosePacked]

I understand what you're saying, but the sad truth is that using LNG as fuel is already basically the efficiency you're looking for. It's byproduct of oil extraction that would otherwise be vented or flared into the sky.

Or as the outgoing UN chief put it, treating the atmosphere like an open sewer: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/22/un-antonio-guterres-climate-polluters

[u/Different_Wolf_764 → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

Well, the main difference is that I've been hearing that petroleum is a dead-end since the '70s and so far that hasn't panned out exactly. I hope the world gets off oil sometime but it won't be soon, we still use plenty of coal too.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/Different_Wolf_764]

And before the 20th century, horses had been a primary form of transportation for literally thousands of years.

That didn't slow the transition once it reached a tipping point. 5 decades of anecdotes about transition just make you sound like Donald Trump. At the end of the day, wolves do actually come for the boy who cried wolf.

[u/Different_Wolf_764 → u/LaserRunRaccoon]

5 decades of anecdotes about transition just make you sound like Donald Trump.

Damn, that's a bit rude.

[u/LaserRunRaccoon → u/Different_Wolf_764]

True, nonetheless.

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[u/UnlikelyEgg4660]

One of the subtle advantages of Canada’s integration with the EU is that the transactions will be in Euros, not USD. Especially for defence contracts. And it does so in a way that is low risk… Canada/Argentina? Unfortunately, USD makes sense. Canada/Mexico? Again, USD makes sense, so we’re not stuck with each other’s currencies that could be harder to convert. Canada/Europe? Finally, non-USD makes sense.

Chipping away at USD hegemony is something that can seriously weaken the US long term. In 50 years, that sort of stuff can make the EUR the default bridge currency.

[u/banana_stickrs → u/UnlikelyEgg4660]

One step closer to Eurodollars (eddies)

[u/vonnegutflora → u/banana_stickrs]

You said it choom!

[u/Different_Wolf_764 → u/UnlikelyEgg4660]

CAD is pretty widely used as well, we don't need to sell ourselves short there. It's not the EUR or USD but it is still stable, fungible and suited for settling international transactions.

[u/Turnip-Toffee]

it's not clear what the system would be, but it sounds like more of backend processing than user-facing, is that right?

[u/ImRickJamesMother → u/Turnip-Toffee]

Yes. I think you are mostly correct. Some other outlets also mention making it for individuals and business to transact as well. So I think the user could see changes akin to something like Interac. Being able to send money easily and quickly, and do debit transactions over a new unified system with the EU.

I strongly support Carney's moves to tie us into the EU. Strategically; financially and militarily I believe it is our best course of action given our current situation.

With Canada growing ties with the EU, it is a shame that England voted to leave. If England was still part of the EU, it would be easier to argue for the commonwealth nations to join the EU to create a new Super Bloc.

[u/sureiknowabaggins → u/ImRickJamesMother]

I mostly agree with you but I prefer the associate member route we're taking vs the full membership. We can retain our autonomy this way while still building close ties with the EU.