Political pros and cons of decision.
In green-lighting the Northern Gateway pipeline, albeit with conditions, the Harper government has uncharacteristically taken on significant political risk in the face of powerful opposition. It now faces a grassroots backlash in B.C. that could singe it badly in the 2015 election, the prevailing wisdom will likely say.
Not all of that may be quite right.
The debate will be fractious, obviously. But it stands to garner the Conservatives as much benefit in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba as it does them harm in British Columbia. The reasons have to do with the ways in which the world has changed since last December, when the National Energy Board joint review panel gave its own approval, also with conditions.
Northern Gateway would see up to 525,000 barrels a day of bitumen moved through a pipeline stretching 1,777 kilometres from outside Edmonton to Kitimat, B.C., and from there by tanker down the Douglas Channel to the Pacific Ocean.
Before that can take place, though, it must be built. That may never happen. Given the opposition already arrayed against this project, including from aboriginal groups and a clear majority of British Columbians, not to mention new opponents who will multiply now that the federal Conservatives have officially said yea, and the inevitable court challenges and protests, Northern Gateway’s chances of ever coming to fruition must be counted as slim. It would take a government highly skilled in the arts of persuasion and seduction to push this through. These are not skills for which the Harper Conservatives are famous.
But the Prime Minister’s Office may not view construction as its immediate objective. Among its other attributes, Northern Gateway can be framed as a classic wedge issue — and one that neatly bifurcates the Canadian political spectrum between Conservatives, in favour, and everyone else — New Democrats, Liberals and Greens — opposed. Tories, the talking points will say, are battling to safeguard Canadian jobs, prosperity and long-term growth, while the feckless hippies across the aisle play political games. The fundraising emails to loyalists from party HQ will fly thick and fast as the brickbats from the other parties accumulate.
Moreover, there is some bipartisan support for this, among socalled blue Liberals on the party’s economic right wing. John Manley, former minister of everything in the Jean Chretien governments and now head of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, has come out in favour, signing his name to an open letter urging approval. So has Chretien protege and former Newfoundland premier Brian Tobin. And so has David Emerson, who served as a senior minister in Liberal and Conservative governments. Former Harper minister Jim Prentice, soon to be premier of Alberta, is the closest thing the Harper government had to a middle-of-the-road, honest broker. Prentice stands to persuade many — particularly in vote-rich Ontario, where objections from B.C. may come off as NIMBYism.
From an environmental standpoint there is no denying this project holds risk that it is different in kind from, say, the TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Simply put, though shipping oil through a pipeline is safer and more efficient than moving it by any other method, Northern Gateway’s proposed pipeline won’t extend all the way to the ocean. Tanker traffic through the Douglas Channel is projected at 220 a year. The safeguards envisioned are considerable, including doublehulled vessels, attached tugs fore and aft, shore-mounted radar, and doubled-up on pilots. Set against all that is the reality that a bitumen spill in this waterway would be catastrophic and unfixable.
But the Conservatives’ trump card in the debate may be simply that the world has changed in ways we would not have chosen and do not like, but that make it all the more vital Canada devise new ways to get the 170 billion barrels of crude in the oilsands to market. Numerous serious accidents have shown the risks of rail transport. U.S. President Barack Obama, in studied repose, refuses to green-light Keystone XL, though he should have many months ago. Russian aggression in Ukraine and now the collapse of the Iraqi state have sent crude prices soaring, showing yet again that Canada’s oilsands are a strategic asset, as well as an economic one. All that mitigates for development.
Certainly the Conservatives will take some serious lumps over this decision. The party’s 21 B.C. MPs now face a bitter fight, and some may lose their seats next year to Tom Mulcair’s New Democrats or Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, who for their own quite valid reasons will proclaim their opposition to the pipeline loud and long.
But did Harper have a better option, politically? Not really. Rejection, after the NEB review panel had said yes, would have unhinged the government’s entire multi-year economic strategy. Delay would have invalidated every argument urging Obama to act on Keystone. Approval kicks off a pitched battle in which the Conservatives will take losses, but also one they will be comfortable fighting, on principle.
Heading into an election year, there are worse places they could be.