They were saying we should have taken advantage of the short-term opportunity.

The problem is that Natural Gas is not portable and the plants required to ship it overseas take time and investment to build.

So, the situation was not so “pants on head” obvious really. That said, I agree with them that we should have done it. I say that as somebody that would like the fossil fuel industry to go away.

Canada would probably be a major LNG provider to Europe at this point if we had done it. However, they are trying to transition away from it as well so the clock is ticking. And, of course, if the war ends, some will go back to buying from Russia. So it was only ever a short-term opportunity for Canada ( though longer than many believed at the time ).

Natural Gas is still a fossil fuel so your main argument is correct. However, it is a lot better than oil or coal. It makes sense to move to natural gas over coal to generate electricity and the world is doing that. It also would have made sense to move vehicles, especially larger trucks, to Natural Gas. Even if the end-goal is electric, NG would have been a great first step ( especially in paces where the electricity is coal or natural gas anyway ).

Fossil fuels aren't a yes/no thing, we aren't getting off them cold turkey and neither is any other country. Part of the process is substituting higher emitting fossil fuels with lower emitting ones while we work towards the goal.