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Trudeau is dead set against Northern Gateway, which makes it rather peculiar for him to be criticizing Harper
Media commentators, political opponents, and even Stephen Harper’s putative hosts gave the Prime Minister’s ninth annual trip to the far north a less than a rousing send off this week.
Michael Byers, the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, pointed out that the dispatch of two ice breakers to scope Canadian claims on the North Pole was – in legal terms — a fool’s errand. There was a story alleging that the Harper government had – yet again – “muzzled” its scientists from reporting record low Arctic sea ice coverage two years ago.
Then there’s the lawsuit against the Conservatives by the Nunavut Planning Commission, claiming that the Feds are trying to interfere with Nunavut affairs by, er, not providing enough cash.
The tour kicked off Thursday morning with a photo op in Whitehorse to announce money for cold weather technology. Ho hum. Meanwhile progress on major commitments such as new icebreakers, and Arctic port and research facilities, continues to flag.
As the Post’s Michael den Tandt noted earlier this week, the fact that northern achievement lags far behind aspiration has been starkly highlighted by the new belligerence of Vladimir Putin, who is pouring huge resources into the Russian Arctic.
If the far north represents a prospective cryogenic version of the “Great Game,” the battle between the British and Russian empires for control of central Asia in the 19th century, then Canada appears to be bringing a duck to a cock fight.
Perhaps the unkindest – albeit indirect — cut to Mr. Harper’s northern aspirations came this week from Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau’s implied criticism was: What is Mr. Harper doing in the north when there is so much undone in the south? Specifically, the Liberal leader accused Mr. Harper of being “all hat and no cattle” when it came to new pipelines. This accusation echoes a previous assessment by UBC’s Professor Byers, who suggested that, when it came to the north, the Prime Minister was “all toque and no mukluks.”
According to Mr. Trudeau – who was speaking in Edmonton and is hoping to win Alberta seats on the back of the Provincial Conservatives’ post-Alison Redford disarray — “We are no closer to getting the two main pipelines that he’s been pushing — Keystone XL and Northern Gateway — passed than we were on the very first day he was in office.”
For the rest of this column, click here: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/08/22/peter-foster-northern-vision-melts/