The spirit bear surrender

In the hours before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was to make this week’s big pipeline announcement, things were already looking up. Green Party leader Elizabeth May had said she was ready to face prison in protest if Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain expansion was approved. “I’m more than prepared to be there to block construction and be arrested and go to jail,” May said, giving some Canadians yet one more reason to look forward to a go-ahead.

Perhaps she’ll get her wish, after Trudeau said late Tuesday he would approve the Trans Mountain expansion, as well as the replacement of Enbridge’s Line 3. Actually, both had already been recommended for approval by the National Energy Board, so it would be more descriptive to call the Liberals’ announcement a decision not to refuse Trans Mountain or Line 3. They did, however, refuse Northern Gateway, adding a north-coast oil tanker ban, too. Gateway had also been approved by the NEB, but needed a second federal approval after a court ruled the first improperly done. It’s a safe bet no one will stage illegal actions protesting the jobs and economic benefits lost to that decision, including to the 31 aboriginal communities that supported the proposal. It’s probably a safe bet that May won’t go to jail protesting Kinder Morgan, either.

At least when Solomon suggesting splitting a baby, it was a ploy to find greater clarity. Trudeau’s great compromise will earn him credit from political pragmatists but it gets us no closer to a clearer justification for new pipelines. The prime minister might have thought he was giving a little to each camp on Tuesday, by approving two project upgrades but refusing a whole new proposal. Except, by tossing aside Northern Gateway based not on the NEB’s recommendation but rather warm-and-fuzzy feelings about how the Great Bear Rainforest is “no place for a pipeline” (because: spirit bears) and its coastline “no place for oil tanker traffic” and it would be wrong to mar such a “unique and beautiful ecosystem” (“a jewel”!) Trudeau revealed that some causes still count for more than others. The activist lawyers and campaign directors who are always steps ahead in strategizing ways to effectively snarl Canada’s fossil fuel development will quickly recognize the challenge before them: To create new anti-development excuses that a yoga-posing, Haida-tattooed, new-agespiritual prime minister can’t say no to.

The Liberal decision came because the climate crusade failed to make a compelling case on Trans Mountain. As Trudeau pointed out, oil will move with or without new tubes in the ground, but those tubes put out fewer emissions than rail and they’re safer for communities, while Trans Mountain poses no intolerable coastal risk. “We have not been and will not be swayed by political arguments,” he insisted. Yes, well, green activists already know pipeline blockades don’t stop oil shipments, but they do depress profits and thus throttle new oil investment, which is nearly as effective.

In fact, Trudeau very much was swayed by politics, choosing the path of least political resistance in approving two projects that were really nothing all that new — an expansion in one case, and a repair in another. It was all brownfield and no greenfield. The Liberals showed they’re okay with improving projects. It would be better if they also favoured creating them.

Still, it counts for something that Tuesday showed we have yet to see the total denormalization of pipeline projects. Trudeau’s political capital isn’t quite at the level it was before he was found greasing dodgy gifts from Chinese communists and praising Cuban ones. But he arguably has more left than most politicians these days, so his willingness to accept even some pipeline projects will surely remind many Canadians that it’s still perfectly reasonable to not jump off the zero-carbon, zero-prosperity deep end with Elizabeth May and her ilk.

Canada’s green radicals, however, now know it’s easier to block pipelines by wringing out public sympathy for aboriginals, forests, faraway coastlines, and even farmland aquifers (as they did with Keystone XL’s initial route) than with computer models predicting minor warming a century away. Alberta’s oil production will overtake the capacity for Line 3 and Trans Mountain in a decade. But the future of Energy East or Keystone XL in Canada won’t look anymore like arguments over emissions. It will look a lot more like what’s happening now in the States with Dakota Access — a moral struggle featuring Indian rights, sacred sites, and clean drinking water. Down there, activists scoff at jail time while they face water cannons and rubber bullets.

There are 157 conditions on the Trans Mountain pipeline, untold court challenges awaiting, and thousands of well-funded protesters ready to blockade roads and workers alongside First Nation activists in the name of defending special species, hallowed territory, hunting grounds, waterways and anything else that pulls at the public’s, and prime minister’s, heartstrings in ways climate cannot.

Trudeau spent much of his remaining political capital Tuesday helping the floundering Rachel Notley government, insisting these pipeline decisions hinged on the social licence derived from her carbon plan, and his. But already it looks like a heavily restricted licence, not valid for disturbing any animals, territory or scenery that, when photographed for a protest placard, look too pretty or pristine to mess with. It might for now be good for winning federal support for pipeline routes that are already dug — until the protests call for water cannons and handcuffing Liz May and a few First Nations people. How staunchly will the Trudeau government defend its social licence then?