(B.C. Premier John Horgan discusses his meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley on the deadlock over Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on April 15. (JUSTIN TANG / CP)
By
April 25, 2018
Could Jason Kenney be right? Is Canada broken? Or is it still “a great country,” as the prime minister insists?
Kenney, who would be premier of Alberta, suggested the country’s been broken by problems getting a pipeline built to carry his province’s oil. It’s quite a call, considering everything that goes into making a country succeed or fail.
But to hear Kenney tell the story, this problem of getting oil to market equates to a national failure. No pipeline, no country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau disputed that in Halifax on Saturday, listing many ways life is getting better for Canadians.
Kenney had a decade in Stephen Harper’s government to make Canada better. Now he seeks political advantage from the current impasse over the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. If Premier Rachel Notley and the NDP can’t fix it, Kenney wins.
And if the Trudeau government is also foiled, so much the better.
It’s all politics. These days, any prime minister of any political stripe would be sorely challenged to get a pipeline built to tidewater. Along with the politics, there are powerful economic, environmental and Aboriginal-rights issues working against it.
Since Canada is a federation, provinces wield considerable power over what goes on within their boundaries. They even have dictatorial powers over beer, as the Supreme Court lamentably ruled last week.
Quebec uses its powers to exploit a resource in neighbouring Labrador. As it collected billions for selling Labrador power to New England, Quebec also refused to let Newfoundland build transmission lines through its territory to U.S. markets.
Instead, new hydro generation from the Lower Churchill River will cross to Nova Scotia via expensive undersea cables in a project backed with federal guarantees.
Quebec also defeated the proposal to build a crude oil pipeline to Saint John, N.B., which is what made the Trans Mountain expansion to the B.C. coast crucial to Alberta’s needs.
In the current world oil economy, Canada, mostly Alberta, loses $15 billion every year due to lack of access to higher-priced global markets. In theory, more pipelines will improve access to those foreign markets and cut the shortfall.
B.C. Premier John Horgan seems determined to block the expansion partly because his minority NDP government is being propped up in the legislature by three anti-oil Green Party MLAs.
Yet Horgan does support a huge hydroelectric project in northern B.C. and a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on the Pacific Coast. He also backs B.C.’s substantial coal industry.
So his claim to oppose the Trans Mountain expansion for purely environmental reasons rings pretty hollow from this distance.
Now polls suggest British Columbians might be changing their minds on the project. Two recent surveys suggest a slight majority now favours the pipeline expansion, especially if it’s approved by the courts.
There is an even better way to test how people feel. If he’s so sure he’s right and that he has the backing of British Columbians, Horgan should call an election over the pipeline issue and settle it once and for all.
This is the only course that is fair and which places the burdens of the decision in the hands of voters. In last year’s election, Horgan’s NDP came second in the popular vote, and the deal with the Greens put it in power. That’s no mandate to hold up the rest of Canada.
If Horgan were to win the election, everyone would be duty-bound to respect the result.
Meanwhile, Alberta and the federal government are suggesting they might pay to get the line built, with or without its current owner, Kinder Morgan Canada.
Using federal money to build a pipeline across B.C. to benefit Alberta is risky. The fact that it’s being proposed at all suggests Canada isn’t broken quite yet.
Correction: Conservative MP Brad Trost has already been defeated in a nomination fight in his home riding. Outdated information appeared in this column last week.
