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Don’t just follow the money — expose the hysterical misrepresentations and the tactics
Congressional Republican attempts to force U.S. President Barack Obama’s hand on the Keystone XL pipeline produced the required result on Wednesday, at least from the GOP perspective. The President gave the project the thumbs-down, and Republicans instantly castigated Mr. Obama as a job destroyer.
For his part, the President naturally made no mention of toadying to radical greens, and even claimed that he had nothing against the pipeline, which would create tens of thousands of jobs and is designed to take up to 900,000 barrels a day of diluted bitumen from the Alberta oil sands to the Gulf Coast. His rejection, rather, was due to Congress’s “rushed and arbitrary deadline,” which prevented the State Department from gathering material necessary to “protect the American people.”
Such electoral manoeuvering has hardly done Keystone sponsor TransCanada — or the oil sands more generally — any favours. Prime Minister Stephen Harper expressed “profound disappointment” at Wednesday’s decision, and reportedly told Mr. Obama of Canada’s determination to diversify export markets. This will be easier said than done.
While emphasis is on aboriginal opposition to the Enbridge-sponsored Northern Gateway line to take oil sands oil to Asian markets via the West Coast, that opposition is significantly being funded and led by the same radical environmental groups that stalled Keystone XL, and will certainly attempt to stall, or kill, a modified application.
Responding to the Keystone XL decision Wednesday, and to the prospect of reapplication, Susan Casey-Lefkowitz of the heavy-hitting U.S.-based National Resources Defense Council declared “TransCanada will face the same valid public concerns and fierce opposition as the first time. No matter how many times it is proposed, Keystone XL is not in the national interest.” The previous evening, a stern-faced Ms. Casey-Lefkowitz had appeared on the CBC’s The National to assert that the NRDC and its colleagues in B.C. were just getting started in fighting Northern Gateway.
Recent comments by Mr. Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver about the influence of foreign money and foreign radicals (such as the NRDC) in filibustering and hijacking the regulatory process for Northern Gateway have inevitably attracted outrage from those who believe themselves to be “well intentioned” rather than mere pawns of green socialism. The hard left has always used the well-intentioned as human shields.
The response to the Conservative attack has congealed around a couple of arguments, which were dutifully trotted out by the unofficial CBC opposition during Peter Mansbridge’s television interview with Mr. Harper Monday night, and Anna Maria Tremonti’s radio grilling of Mr. Oliver Wednesday morning: “You don’t think foreign money should be involved in opposing Northern Gateway? What about all the foreign money that’s involved in promoting the oil sands? And didn’t Canadians try to influence the U.S. political process in gaining approval for Keystone XL?”
For the rest of this column, please go to the National Post/Financial Post website: http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/01/19/peter-foster-follow-the-money-then-expose-the-misinformation/