Trudeau, B.C. premier tiptoe around pipeline
It was comedy gold in the foyer of the House of Commons Tuesday when new B.C. Premier John Horgan came to town.
At a press conference with Justin Trudeau, he inadvertently knocked a glass of water off his podium. Quicker than you could say “unstable minority government,” Horgan deadpanned: “Spills can happen anywhere.”
Trudeau chimed in: “We’ll clear it up,” to which the NDP premier quipped, “It’s a federal responsibility.”
It was the only time either voluntarily raised the issue that divides them. It was as if they’d agreed: “Don’t mention the pipeline.”
Trudeau mentioned it once but got away with it because it was so oblique. “We stand by the decision we took, in a respectful way,” he said.
Horgan preferred to focus on the federal government’s role as a “great ally” in fighting wildfires,
TRUDEAU, B.C. PREMIER MEET, TIPTOE AROUND KEY BONE OF CONTENTION
the opioid epidemic and the softwood lumber dispute with the U.S. “We often feel isolated on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, but we have an ally in the prime minister,” he said.
It all suggested fears are overblown that a new NDP government in B.C., even one propped up by the Green Party, will make killing Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline one of its top priorities.
The new government continues to pay lip service to blocking the pipeline. But it was noticeable that the mandate letter for Horgan’s environment and climate change minister, George Heyman, spoke of using “every tool available to defend B.C.’s interests in the face of the expansion of the Kinder Morgan pipeline,” rather than employing more strident language about blocking its construction.
No doubt the B.C. New Democrats and their Green bedfellows would like to postpone indefinitely the sevenfold increase in tanker traffic it suggests Trans Mountain will trigger.
But this government was elected on a mandate to make life more affordable, improve services and create jobs.
Shutting down a multibilliondollar investment was not one of those priorities — it didn’t even make the Green Party’s list of conditions for supporting the NDP, unlike official-party status, campaign finance reform and a referendum on proportional representation.
With the news Tuesday that Pacific NorthWest LNG will not proceed with the $36-billion liquefied natural gas megaproject it had planned to build in B.C. — which, like Trans Mountain, gained federal approval last year — the likelihood that Horgan will use all the province’s resources to frustrate a project in which Trudeau has invested considerable political capital becomes slimmer still.
The Trudeau Liberals have banked on majority support in every region of the country for an energy transition plan that includes at least one pipeline to the coast and a shift to renewable energy through the implementation of carbon pricing.
Even in B.C., an Abacus Data poll suggested 42 per cent support such a plan, 36 per cent would accept it and just 22 per cent oppose it.
With those kind of numbers, Horgan may have judged discretion is the better part of valour.
If so, he will be aided by the ever-accommodating Trudeau, who has undoubtedly offered generous federal funding for transit, child care and social housing as a quid pro quo.
It’s no great surprise the two men are able to do business — as Trudeau noted, they’re both progressive politicians, elected to make life easier for the middle class, protect the environment and advance Indigenous reconciliation. They are so compatible that on Tuesday they seemed to be wearing the same blue suit, polka-dot tie and brown shoes.
The concern remains that both Horgan and Trudeau will allow their progressive principles to blind them to the pragmatic reality of an economy struggling to maintain its competitiveness.
The Chamber of Commerce issued a warning Tuesday that Canada’s climate change plan and other measures are raising the cost of doing business to a breaking point.
In a letter to the Prime Minister and provincial premiers, Chamber president Perrin Beatty said his members are “deeply worried about their ability to both grow their businesses within Canada or compete for investment and customers from abroad” because of rising costs such as the carbon tax and imminent increase in Canada Pension Plan rates.
The Petronas LNG announcement was more the result of prolonged depressed global prices than domestic politics. But the election of a government that has sent mixed signals about LNG development, propped up by a Green Party that is openly hostile, cannot have boosted the confidence levels of international investors.
Beatty suggested the negative impact of carbon pricing on competitiveness be offset by cost reductions in other areas.
Regulatory reform requires close attention in Ottawa — in particular, the proposed overhaul of the environmental assessment process that would require proposals meet the “five pillars of sustainability” — environmental, social, cultural, health and economic.
Beatty suggested if the proposals were implemented by the Trudeau government, it would result in “an unworkable system that would effectively end investment in Canada’s natural resources sector.”
That’s the sector that counts for 17 per cent of Canada’s economy, employs 1.8 million Canadians and sends $27 billion to the federal treasury every year.
In the world of progressive politics, “competitiveness” is the one word nobody mentions.
Yet it needs to be nurtured, if the growing number of centre-left governments in this country are going to sustain the social spending to which they are so devoted.