One heartening development in President Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada is that the post-national identity peddled by our prime minister and his followers has been replaced with a hefty dose of red-blooded patriotism. However, while this is a time to come together, it most definitely is not a time to let the people who led us into this precarious position off scot-free — people such as British Columbia Premier David Eby.
Following in the footsteps of some other premiers, Eby decided last weekend to ban American alcohol sales from Republican “red states” from B.C.’s government stores. No more bourbon for you (and whisky is most definitively not spelled with an “-ey” like those boorish loons down south claim). California wine remains OK, presumably because its political leanings are acceptable to the NDP.
Eby further attempted to emulate the shadow of Winston Churchill by identifying 10 projects that his government believed could get going “quite quickly.” Indeed, this was from an “internal list” of projects he and his closest advisors had, which is now apparently being reviewed by a multitude of B.C. public service members. What industries are these amazing projects from? Why, energy and mining in rural communities, Eby told us at minute 17 of a Saturday press conference.
Well, blow me down. Energy and mining are getting love from Eby’s NDP. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to hear any positive word thrown the resource sector’s way. But I am very curious to know where these magical projects suddenly came from. For, as anyone who has even the slightest bit of interest in the resource sector (a group that didn’t include Eby until five minutes ago) would tell you, projects like this don’t just appear because you want them to. They take years to develop and plan.
So, the only explanation for the fact that there will soon be 10 shovel-ready projects large enough to play a role in sheltering British Columbians from the American tariff threat, is that Eby and the NDP have been sitting on or blocking these projects until Trump went doolally and decided Canada was the source of U.S. ills. Blocking them, you understand, because it was ideologically convenient.
The notion that the NDP would sit on and resource projects because they didn’t fit its activist enviro-agenda fits very nicely with past behaviour. Take the example of Cedar LNG, a massive natural gas project in northern British Columbia. It is majority-owned by the local Haisla Nation, with Pembina Pipeline also holding a stake. Despite this project being a clear and obvious benefit to the province, First Nations and the business community, the project languished for months on the desk of the environment minister before approval.
Eby, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and many others have suddenly found their great love for Canada’s resources due to economic imperative and peril. While their zeal to approve many new projects may be welcome, it would be irresponsible to let them off the hook for the decade of underinvestment, contempt and abuse they have hurled in the direction of oil and gas, mining and other critical resources.
It’s about time we got a reversal from the many absurd notions we’ve heard over the past several years, such as the one that there has “never been a strong business case” to send LNG to Germany or that B.C. doesn’t desperately need more mines and less red tape. In our pleasure to see Eby and Trudeau finally come around, we shouldn’t forget to ask them where they were five years ago and what they’ve been doing with the power we so foolishly gave them.
National Post
Adam Pankratz is a lecturer at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business.