Pipeline spat descends into farce

The current state of the TransMountain pipeline battle between B.C., Alberta and the federal government is a slapstick comedy... unless your livelihood is directly or indirectly dependent upon the oil sector and the movement of oil through pipelines to refineries and/or shipping ports. The most ridiculous irony came Tuesday when B.C.’s NDP government filed a constitutional lawsuit against Alberta for passing its own bill to restrict the flow of oil and gas to B.C.

In other words, the John Horgan government wants Alberta to keep sending the same amount of oil on the same existing Kinder Morgan pipeline but is opposed to Kinder Morgan building a second pipeline on the same route so Alberta can send more oil through B.C. for export.

The nonsense runs even deeper because B.C. has mounted a separate legal query to the Federal Court asking if the province is allowed to control the amount of unrefined oil flowing through pipelines in B.C. So in one courtroom, lawyers will argue that B.C. should have the right to set limits on the flow of oil while in another courtroom, lawyers representing the same client (the Province of British Columbia) will argue that Alberta doesn’t have the right to set limits on the flow of oil.

Alberta is hardly the innocent victim in these proceedings.

“It’s very interesting, on one hand they don’t want our oil and on the other hand they’re suing us to give them our oil,” Alberta premier Rachel Notley said Tuesday.

That all-or-nothing approach makes no sense.

Many people opposed to the TransMountain project would admit that they’re not opposed to all pipelines, just this one, just as some people would protest the expansion of a two-lane highway to four lanes because it’ll wreck the neighbourhood (in this case, six lanes, since the new pipeline would triple the overall capacity).

Notley’s rhetoric has also reached comical proportions. She declined to attend a Western premiers meeting in Yellowknife on Wednesday, because she said there’s no point in discussing a national prescription plan with Horgan while the pipeline’s future remains in doubt.

“Pharmacare does not grow on trees,” she said. “In order to protect and improve the things that matter to people, like pharmacare, we need a strong, functioning national economy.”

News flash to Alberta: there’s more to the national economy than one sector (oil) and one pipeline (TransMountain).

Furthermore, if a national prescription plan is a smart way to improve the overall health of Canadians while reducing primary health care costs, it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether a single pipeline goes ahead or not.

In the end, however, both B.C. and Alberta are in the wrong.

The final fate of the pipeline is exclusively federal jurisdiction and the Justin Trudeau government has already made clear its unwavering support for the completion of the TransMountain project.

Trudeau could have prevented much of this affair by taking a far more aggressive stance against the Horgan government from the outset.

B.C.’s attempts to stop this project are not just a challenge to Trudeau, but to the authority of every future prime minister and federal government, and should have been treated accordingly. There is already ample enough evidence present from the NDP’s own election platform for the federal government to file a legal claim against B.C., seeking damages for violating Ottawa’s legal right to approve projects in the national interest.

Sunny ways only get one so far in politics. Sometimes elected leaders must bring the rain.

Notley and Horgan are just the silly actors in a farce the prime minister should have put an end to long ago.