Provinces’ risks high if Trudeau intervenes

Be careful for what you wish; you just might get it.

Those of us rooting for the federal government to use its constitutional power to override B.C.’s recent decision to delay Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline would be wise to consider this old adage.

Do we really want Ottawa to establish a precedent it might choose to use against Alberta in the future?

For instance, the National Energy Program — as clear a heavy-handed federal action as any — was an example of Ottawa invoking the “national interest” to ride roughshod over powers given by the constitution exclusively to the provinces.

While Alberta ultimately “won” that philosophical fight, it was not before years of economic decimation in the province.

I’m not saying Alberta should accept B.C.’s ridiculous overstep of its legal and constitutional powers. Shutting down electricity talks and boycotting B.C. wines are good first steps. I’m just saying we ought to be careful how we involve Ottawa in this fight, just in case we give Ottawa a hunger to use the “national interest” claim to, say, stop oilsands development.

The current government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of the most cluelessly “green” governments ever. Many of its senior policymakers helped devise Ontario’s alternate energy strategy in the 2000s, the strategy that has led to a doubling of electricity bills and a huge increase in provincial debt (Ontario now owes more money than any non-national government in the world) and has driven away manufacturers and manufacturing jobs.

It’s not hard to imagine these same Liberal thinkers trying to shut down the oilsands in the name of saving the national or global environment.

I’ve always been a believer in provinces’ rights. I still am. A federation works best when it is decentralized.

Confederation suffers its greatest tensions, particularly with Quebec and the West, when centralists such as Pierre Trudeau, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien are prime minister. And that’s why we heard almost nothing about Quebec nationalism, Western alienation and federal-provincial conferences when the decentralizer Stephen Harper was in charge.

So, we need to be careful what we ask Justin Trudeau and his government to do about the B.C. NDP government’s phoney excuse of needing more time to study the impact of additional bitumen shipments through its territory.

I think what B.C. is doing is unconstitutional. And I think a future federal government that tried to claim the “national interest” to shut down or restrict oilsands development would be just as unconstitutional.

And I am semi-optimistic the courts, in the end, would say Alberta was right in both cases.

But a jumped up federal government, drunk on its “national interest” power, could make economic life in Alberta horrible for half a dozen years before federal courts ordered them to back off.

So just what should Albertans be wanting Ottawa to do?

It would be nice just to hear PM Trudeau say B.C. is wrong and ask them to stop playing games. So far, he hasn’t even come close.

But there are way more federal Liberal votes in B.C. than Alberta. So I don’t expect him to take any firm stand.

Indeed, I suspect both Ottawa and the B.C. government are hoping to drag out the start of the Trans Mountain project long enough that Kinder Morgan gives up.

Then, both Ottawa and Victoria will get what they want — no pipeline — without a long, messy constitutional court battle.