Bilous talks tough on trade dispute
B.C. launches legal challenge against wine ban as pipeline dispute simmers
British Columbia is sending its lawyers to fight Alberta in the ongoing Trans Mountain pipeline dispute.
“That’s great. Get ’em ready,” Alberta Trade Minister Deron Bilous said Tuesday on his way into a cabinet meeting.
Alberta’s western neighbours upped the ante in the spat Monday, launching a legal challenge against the B.C. wine ban Premier Rachel Notley announced two weeks ago.
British Columbia opted to go through the Canadian free trade agreement’s dispute settlement process. That puts a resolution more than a year away, with a compliance panel report due in 460 days. Alberta can then appeal.
That’s decidedly longer than the 30-day New West Trade Agreement dispute process, under which Alberta recently challenged Saskatchewan over that province’s licence plate ban for Alberta vehicles on government job sites.
Bilous shrugged off suggestions it’s a little awkward for Alberta to now be at the receiving end of a trade non-compliance complaint, given the very public spat with Saskatchewan a couple of months ago.
“We said we would take retaliatory measures against B.C.,” Bilous said, and that’s exactly what his government is doing.
Alberta has every intention of respecting the court process around the latest complaint, Bilous said,
B.C. has really one option, and that is for them to smarten up and realize what they’re doing is unconstitutional.
but the only way Alberta will back down is if B.C. reverses its plan to restrict increases on bitumen shipments while it conducts more spill testing.
“B.C. has really one option, and that is for them to smarten up and realize what they’re doing is unconstitutional,” Bilous said.
“A province cannot dictate what goes into a pipeline — that’s federal jurisdiction. They need to acknowledge that, recognize it, and ensure that this pipeline moves forward.”
And if they don’t?
“We’re going to continue to bring forward measures,” Bilous said.
Those measures continue to be hashed out by Alberta’s market access task force.
The 19-member panel comprised of ministers, experts and heavy hitters met for the first time last week. Bilous doesn’t have a date for the next meeting, but said it would likely be later this week.
A couple of months ago, Bilous and his western trade minister colleagues sat down to chat about banding together to increase market access.
Ultimately, that’s still his end goal, he said Tuesday, but for now, his No. 1 priority is the $7.4-billion pipeline expansion.
“All that we’re focused on is getting Trans Mountain moving and built, and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to get B.C. to back down on this,” he said.