Western premiers missed the point
Western Canada’s premiers last week passed up an opportunity to help Alberta expand the oil pipeline to Vancouver, by essentially turning a blind eye to the raging AlbertaBritish Columbia pipeline dispute.
As exercises of interprovincial statesmanship go, it was less than impressive.
The western premiers, including leaders of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories, held their annual meeting last Wednesday in Yellowknife to discuss matters of interest in the region. The main thing happening in Western Canada this year is that the Kinder Morgan pipeline company is trying to expand its pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver in order to ship Alberta bitumen to export customers. Alberta’s New Democratic Premier Rachel Notley supports the pipeline project. B.C. Premier John Horgan is obstructing the project as best he can in hopes of discouraging Kinder Morgan and inducing them to abandon it.
Ms. Notley learned ahead of the meeting that her colleagues would not support a joint statement along the lines that Mr. Horgan should let the pipeline be built. She stayed home and sent her deputy premier in her place. In her absence, the premiers talked about other things, including marijuana and pharmacare funding. On the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project, they had nothing to say.
“The Trans Mountain issue clearly has the magnifying glass over it, but we also have other issues that affect our Canadian economic future,” Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister told the closing news conference. His Saskatchewan counterpart, Scott Moe, said the federal government should solve the pipeline problem.
Employment and income are inevitable benefits of the Trans Mountain project. Expansion of oilsands production will offer opportunities for construction workers and other tradespeople from all parts of Canada, especially the Prairie region and the North. If there ever was a moment for the western premiers to stand up and be counted, this was it.
The federal government has to gauge sentiment in the region and in the country in deciding how much vigour to put into support of Trans Mountain expansion. If they accept guidance from the Yellowknife meeting, they might conclude that no one east of Alberta cares one way or the other. They could justifiably turn their backs and let the thing die.
By boycotting the meeting, Ms. Notley made it easy for her colleagues to evade the pipeline question. With more adroit diplomacy, she could have been able to lead the Yellowknife meeting into an expression of Western Canada’s eagerness for the benefits the project can bring. Even without her leadership, the others should have spoken up.
At the moment, Ms. Notley’s plan is to shut off shipment of the petroleum products that drive cars, trucks and airplanes in B.C. This is a sly way of showing Mr. Horgan’s hypocrisy in running an oil-based economy while refusing shipment of oil across his province for other customers. For his part, Mr. Horgan has insisted that domestic oil consumption and export oil-pipeline expansion are separate issues.
Mr. Horgan may succeed in killing the Trans Mountain expansion project through administrative obstruction. If he does, he should thank the western premiers for sitting on their hands when the time came to push the project forward.
An editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press (distributed by The Canadian Press)