High time Ottawa narrows gap between ‘us and them’
Feds hyperventilate as GM plant closes but Albertans get no such treatment
The contrast between us and them is as gaping as Alberta’s oil price differential.
That reality was top of mind for many of the almost 400 proenergy protesters who gathered outside the Telus Convention Centre on Tuesday, chanting “build that pipe now!” with the hope that visiting Federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau would hear them. If he did, he was tone deaf to their desperation.
On Monday, General Motors announced it would close its Oshawa, Ont., plant in about a year, laying off 2,900 autoworkers.
The federal government and the PM are acting like it’s Armageddon, while there is virtual silence on the national stage about the fact Alberta can’t move its oil and 120,000 oil and gas workers have lost their jobs.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met for one hour with Jerry Dias, president of Unifor — the successor to the now-defunct Canadian Auto Workers union.
Last Thursday, while in Calgary, the PM met for one hour — part of it a photo op — with 11 oil and gas industry bigwigs. Dias gets an hour, each Calgary industry leader got five minutes and 45 seconds with the PM, if that.
If Morneau and Trudeau don’t think this kind of short shrift is noticed, they’re wrong.
Nikki Sitch, a landman with Kiwetinohk Resources, says she came out to protest “the apathy of all of our governments.”
“The contrast between how seriously Trudeau and Morneau treat Ontario autoworkers compared with Alberta energy workers is amazing to me. We just don’t seem to get any sympathy or action,” said Sitch, a former president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Landmen.
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s unfortunate that people are going to lose their jobs (in Oshawa) but it’s equally as unfortunate when Albertans lose their jobs.”
Holding a “we need pipelines” sign, Greg McLean, managing director with Criterium Merchant Capital, says Albertans have to do everything they can to get action from Ottawa.
“The oil price differential is costing the Canadian economy $80 to $100 million a day. It’s Minister Morneau’s job to defend the treasury of this country and I don’t see him doing that,” said McLean, who revealed that he’s running for the Conservative Party nomination in Calgary Centre.
“For a guy who’s running a $20-billion deficit, this differential loss is half of that.”
On Tuesday, West Texas Intermediate oil sold for $51.83. Western Canadian Select sold for a paltry $12.38 — a $39.45 differential caused by a glut of oil that has nowhere to go because pipeline construction has not kept up with oil production.
Despite the Calgary Stampeders Grey Cup rally just a block away, there were more protesters outside the convention centre than the 260 people who turned up inside to hear Morneau at a lunchtime Chamber of Commerce event.
Last Thursday — the day after Morneau delivered his Nov. 21 fiscal update — Alberta Premier Rachel Notley made a somewhat prescient statement: “If there were this kind of economic crisis going on in the manufacturing sector in Ontario, we’re pretty sure it would make its way into the first two paragraphs of the fiscal update,” she told reporters.
In his fiscal update speech, Morneau dedicated just 26 words to Alberta’s problems in his 2,398-word statement. Following his Calgary Chamber of Commerce speech, Morneau met with reporters briefly. Yours truly asked him, in part, why he’s so reticent to speak about Alberta’s problems and the value of the energy industry when he has a national audience?
“I do give it an important part of my speeches across the country,” he said, adding that incentives for businesses to invest and create jobs will help all sectors of the economy.
Mostly, he kept repeating that the federal Liberal government has “substituted words with action” when it bought the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion in the summer.
What that action did was tell the world that Canada’s regulatory system is such a quagmire that companies are walking away from projects in which they invested hundreds of millions of dollars.
There were other actions that spoke louder than words, too. Trudeau vetoing the Northern Gateway pipeline, then moving the goalposts on Energy East by saying TransCanada would be accountable for all the CO2 emissions caused by the end user of the product in the pipe (something he doesn’t make Saudi Arabia, Bombardier or General Motors accountable for) and imposing a carbon tax when the energy industry was on life support.
The contrast between how Alberta is treated and how this federal government treats everyone else, including foreign dictatorships, is bigger than our differential. It’s long past time to narrow that gap.