In the new world order inaugurated in Washington this week, the unthinkable is suddenly plausible.
Following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, came out in support of building oil pipelines to the Pacific Coast.
That is an almost unbelievable coming from someone who was among the most prominent opponents of the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline that would have exported diluted bitumen from the oil sands in Alberta to a marine terminal in Kitimat, B.C., for transportation to Asian markets via oil tankers. The Enbridge project was killed by the Trudeau government in 2016.
“That was a different time,” Phillip said. “We are staring into the abyss of uncertainty right now with the climate crisis and the American threat. I would suggest that if we don’t build that kind of infrastructure, Trump will — and there won’t be any consultation on the environment or the rule of law.”
Stewart walked back his comments on Wednesday, saying he doesn’t support resuscitating dead projects. It appears he spoke his mind and got hammered for it by fellow travellers.
But the fact that he even voiced such sentiments is a sign that all levels of civil society are starting to appreciate that Canada is facing a national economic emergency, and that the old rules no longer apply.
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has already called for Canada to “stop being stupid and start building LNG plants, pipelines, refineries, upgraders and other energy infrastructure so that we can sell our energy to the world without going through the Americans.”
But the realization that Canada needs to build probably does not extend to Steven Guilbeault, the activist turned environment minister, who has made it his business to ensure Canada’s energy business is regulated to death.
Guilbeault emerged from the cabinet retreat in Quebec this week to tell reporters that he is supporting Mark Carney in the forthcoming Liberal leadership contest.
It was a gift to Poilievre, who appears to be quite panicked by Carney’s candidacy. He quickly attacked the endorsement on social media, calling the environment minister “the biggest loon in the Liberal government.”
Carney is seeking to pretend the Liberals have changed, he said, but he is just as radical as Justin Trudeau.
The support of the “crazy carbon tax minister” is proof of that, Poilievre said. Guilbeault wants to ban road-building, nuclear power, shut down the forestry sector to save the caribou and is against hydro-electric dams.
The Conservative leader suggested that Guilbeault would not support Carney unless the leadership candidate had privately committed to keeping the carbon tax.
The two have a “carbon-tax compact,” Poilievre suggested, without evidence.
“Carney is just like Justin — don’t be fooled,” he concluded.
That could be dismissed as the kind of smear that has become a trademark of this Conservative leader.
Except….in this case, there are legitimate concerns about Guilbeault’s influence on Carney’s policies on energy and growth. In truth, it is an endorsement that he might well have done without.
The bicycling environment minister from downtown Montreal has become the public face the government’s activist agenda. While in office, he suggested that the Liberal government would no longer invest in new roads because the current network is “perfectly adequate to respond to the needs of Canadians.”
Guilbeault has long opposed all fossil fuel development and endorsed the idea that Alberta’s crude should be landlocked. He has made clear his lack of enthusiasm for small modular nuclear reactors and carbon capture technology. He threatened his resignation if there were further exemptions to the carbon tax. And he pushed the idea of an oilpatch emissions cap, even though he knew it would hit production levels. The draft regulations for the cap were introduced at the most delicate time in the negotiations between government and industry on the most significant decarbonization agreement in Canada’s history: the Pathways Alliance carbon capture project.
Some of Guilbeault’s fellow travellers see Pathways as a subsidy to increase production (which it would, even as it lowered emissions), and as such, deem it undesirable.
Carney is keen on Pathways as the most likely way to reduce emissions. He has also suggested that he would kill the consumer carbon tax.
But Carney told a 2021 parliamentary committee meeting, while being grilled by Poilievre, that he supported the cancellation of Northern Gateway.
Now that he is running to be prime minister, his opinion may have shifted. People close to him say he has not ruled out backing new pipelines and his campaign emphasizes his pragmatism in times of crisis.
But the energy file is a vulnerability, and Carney needs to resolve policy vagueness on diversifying Canada’s economy away from its reliance on the U.S.
Guilbeault’s endorsement is a messy distraction, a mistake on a par with the Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho being dropped by Coca-Cola after being filmed drinking a Pepsi. But it may prove moot.
It’s far from clear that Enbridge, the proponent of the Northern Gateway, is still enthusiastic about the project. When the company was asked in 2019 whether it would revive the pipeline, then CEO Al Monaco said the project had “sailed” from a business and regulatory point of view.
TC Energy, which had proposed to build the Energy East pipeline to the New Brunswick coast, has similarly distanced itself from reviving the project.
But Gateway died because of regulatory uncertainty and First Nations opposition (Energy East faced the additional problem of the Quebec government’s animus).
If those hurdles were removed, the prospect of lucrative Asian and European markets could tempt the pipeline companies to take another look.
Grand Chief Phillip is right that if Canada doesn’t increase its pipeline capacity, Trump will step in.
On Monday, the president issued executive orders to increase America’s oil and gas production. They included calls to “unleash Alaska’s untapped natural resources” by building “all necessary pipelines and export infrastructure.”
Robert Asselin, vice president at the Business Council of Canada, suggested in the Globe and Mail this week that the developments in recent weeks have “shattered Canada’s complacency” and that a “transformative response,” such as occurred in the U.S. after the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, is required to begin our country’s economic reconstruction.
The apparent conversion of a prominent opponent into supporting Northern Gateway is the kind of shift in thinking that is required across the political spectrum: a recognition that making pragmatic trade-offs and compromises in the national interest is the only way through this crisis.
National Post
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