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Novice Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford, while expressing the Federal Cabinet’s infinite concern for a balanced appraisal of the Northern Gateway pipeline, which is due by next Tuesday, managed to leave the impression in New York this week that the decision might be delayed, even as he was also quoted as saying that it was “relatively straightforward.” Officials were left to unfuzzify his remarks.
This is hardly the time for communications cock-ups, particularly given that the Harper government is coming under predictable pressure as it prepares — presumably — to approve the proposed $6.5-billion pipeline from the oil sands to the coast of B.C. Why would the Cabinet want any delay? Is Stephen Harper aspiring to look like President Odithers on Keystone XL?
Northern Gateway is at least as politically fraught for Mr. Harper as Keystone XL is for Mr. Obama, but in economic terms the Enbridge proposal is of far greater economic significance for Canada than Keystone XL is to the U.S.
Liberal Opposition leader Justin Trudeau called upon the Prime Minister this week to “do the right thing and just say no” to the pipeline, which in turn gave Mr. Harper the opportunity to conjure up the ghost of Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre, perpetrator of the 1980 National Energy Program, and suggest that opposition to the oil industry might be in the Liberals’ DNA.
In 1980 the issues were equalization and economic nationalist hysteria. Now the issue is environmental hysteria. The core of both schemes is the promotion of more and bigger government, only now the environmental thrust is part of a global agenda, and has additional players in the shape of environmental NGOs and radical scientists.
ENGOs are nothing if not politically and media savvy, and part of their anti-pipeline campaign, spearheaded by Forest Ethics Advocacy, is to focus on the 21 federal Conservative MPs in B.C., with the Federal NDP as their Greek chorus.
Five years ago, the prospect of losing their seats led Conservative MPs in Saskatchewan privately to oppose the takeover of Potash Corp. by BHP Billiton (thus establishing that economic nationalism is still very much with us). Mr. Harper duly obliged since, while no economic nationalist, he was the head of a minority government. However, there is a federal election next year and how Mr. Harper treats the Northern Gateway issue is critical to the fate of his party in B.C., and thus to his prospects of another majority. We may be sure that approval — however provisional and subtly-couched — will be framed as Ottawa trying to force the pipeline down the throats of B.C. residents.
Last week, a widely-reported (that is, one story that was reproduced across the country) letter to Mr. Harper from “300 scientists” called upon him to overturn the December recommendation by the Joint Review Panel that Northern Gateway was in the public interest, subject to a whopping 209 conditions.
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