The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
EDMONTON and CALGARY – It was a notion some say was a long time coming: Alberta should sweeten the pot for U.S. lawmakers weighing approval of the Keystone XL pipeline by boosting environmental performance in the oil sands.
But one day after a suggestion from an Alberta envoy to Washington that the province would do just that, officials backed away from the idea. Instead, Alberta will continue to “tell its story,” as Premier Alison Redford put it, leaving the Keystone approval up to the U.S. State Department and TransCanada Corp., the company behind Keystone XL.
At the same time, some in Alberta say a new look at green rules is exactly what the province should contemplate if it hopes to persuade others to open their land to pipelines bearing oil sands crude.
The debate was sparked Monday when Alberta’s envoy to Washington, David Manning, suggested in a Reuters interview that Alberta has “much more in our toolbox” to push for a pipeline approval. By Tuesday, senior government leaders were disputing that notion.
Alberta will continue to push for technological improvements and better oil sands monitoring, said Cal Dallas, the province’s Minister of International and Intergovernmental Relations. But “is there something that’s imminent that’s directly related to the [Keystone] decision the Secretary of State is weighing in on? No,” he said. Mr. Dallas stressed: “The conversation … doesn’t involve sweetening the pot.”
In the eyes of critics, Alberta has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to oil sands monitoring. The province continues to push for pipelines – Ms. Redford appeared in Calgary with New Brunswick Premier David Alward on Tuesday, praising a potential project to send bitumen from her province to his – but has been accused of lagging on environmental policy.
University of Alberta biologist David Schindler, who co-authored a study revealing elevated levels of contaminants in an oil sands river, pointed to the recent report from federal Environment Commissioner Scott Vaughan, who concluded that “shortcomings leave me concerned that environmental protection is failing to keep pace with economic development [in Canada].”
“It’s at the point where Canada simply isn’t trusted internationally to be doing the right thing on environment any more. I think we’d have to do something pretty hard to sweeten the pot enough to regain that trust in order to make [the United States] approve Keystone,” Dr. Schindler said in an interview.
For the rest of this article, please go to the Globe and Mail website: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/alberta-stands-firm-on-keystone/article8281638/