At the time of writing, I still have no idea how much money our “progressive” governments in Victoria, Edmonton, and Ottawa are planning to shell out in order to persuade the (mostly Texan) shareholders of Kinder Morgan to complete the $7.4 billion Trans Mountain Pipeline Project. Justin Trudeau continues to utter annoying banalities about “the national interest” without providing any independent or detailed economic analysis justifying a major bailout. Right-wing pundits delight in pointing out that it wouldn’t be necessary to throw taxpayers money at the project if these three governments’ environmentalism hadn’t scared away private investors in the first place. For once, I am inclined to agree with them. Trudeau and Notley are potentially spending billions to bail out a company to do something that it was going to do anyway, until one NDP government's concern for the environment created too much uncertainty for the company. My spin is different however: if billions in public money were available to invest, it should have been to produce and export something other than diluted raw bitumen so as to achieve something more like a win-win for both the economy and the environment.
I have been saying this for many years, but it is hardly original: David Black (B.C. local newspaper publisher) was promoting this notion for the Northern Gateway project sometime ago, with apparent support from Andrew Weaver. If progressive politicians had been singing from this song book all along, they might not have backed into the current “reactive” posture, in which Premier Notley does not have time to contemplate changing the nature of Alberta’s oilsands industry, but simply must get the pipeline built if she is to have any hope of being competitive in next year’s provincial election. If all three governments had committed to putting money from carbon taxes to subsidize an “anything but diluted bitumen” approach to tidewater oil exports, and promised to facilitate the export of anything else (bitumen pellets, refined crude, gas, diesel) , taxpayers might have gotten value for their money.
Instead, politicians of all stripes at all levels have been working at cross purposes as they follow their own short-term, self-interested political strategies. If I had been the provincial NDP leader in 2011 B.C. election, I would have put this approach clearly on the political agenda--back when there was conceivably still time for such a policy to work. It also would have been smart politically, since it would have suggested an openness and sensitivity to national economic interests as well as to local environmental ones. Instead , Adrian Dix’s trademark mixture of ignorance and arrogance (redolent of his time as Glen Clark’s closest advisor) yielded a last-minute unilateral decision to chase after green voters that backfired by playing into the hands of ‘pro-economy’ B.C. Liberals. Meanwhile, Stephen Harper decided to use his newfound majority government to ham-fistedly provoke the Idle No More Movement with his Omnibus Budget legislation, bring the NEB and the pipeline approval process into disrepute with his narrowing of environmental criteria and attacks upon environmentalists, and (eventually) a losing court case to First Nations over the Northern Gateway proposal.
But the real culprit now in my eyes is the Federal Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau. The federal Liberal Party has had much more room to manoeuvre on this file than either John Horgan or Rachel Notley over the past three years. A true ‘win-win’ was theoretically possible. Instead, Trudeau opted for an implicit bargain with Notley whereby she would support the National Climate Plan in exchange for his support for the Trans-Mountain pipeline. But what happens to that bargain if Jason Kenney’s Conservatives get elected next year? Trudeau will be left holding the bag--which will have a big hole in the bottom of it.
Mark Crawford is a professor of Political Science at Athabasca University.
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