Only climate guarantee is more polarization

Thursday’s dawn brought more foreboding to the country’s climatechange agenda.

Ontario’s opposition Progressive Conservatives formally ditched support for a carbon tax.

Pipeline battle lines between British Columbia and Alberta remained firmly drawn.

And, oh my, Jason Kenney, a prospective Alberta premier and carbon-tax opponent, was lurking in the corridors of Parliament Hill.

Against this backdrop, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna strode into the National Press Theatre and set to juggling.

In unveiling a new environmental regulatory process, McKenna was dealing with one of the defining dilemmas of this Liberal mandate, the crowded intersection between jobs, investment, climate change and Indigenous rights.

Despite her claims otherwise, one must obviously toss politics on to that heap.

Pipelines and other major energy projects, by McKenna’s own admission, polarize Canadians, even those from the same tribe, as British Columbia Premier John Horgan and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, both New Democrats, are proving.

The Liberals may have gone a long way to repair the damage done to the regulatory process and eliminated the discredited National Energy Board, but they are not going to end the polarization and they certainly can’t be all things to all people on this file.

McKenna stayed true to the “on the one hand, but on the other hand” mantra of her government, stressing the environment and the economy go together and vowing the Liberals will show the world they can protect the environment while attracting investment.

There are hundreds of major resource projects worth more than $500 billion in investment planned for the next decade, she said, and pipeline projects create jobs.

On the other hand, Indigenous rights must be respected and Canadians must have a greater opportunity for input, she said.

It sounded at times as if McKenna was debating herself from the podium.

At the end of the day, however, it is still going to be up to her and her government.

Elected politicians have to make hard decisions based on the national interest, the minister said, and streamlining and simplifying the regulatory process and explaining decisions simply and promptly to Canadians will not purge the process of politics.

McKenna and her government are pushing through the twinning of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which would carry Alberta bitumen to Burnaby, B.C., even though it has not won community or Indigenous buy-in.

It was approved under the discredited process under Stephen Harper that McKenna would dismantle with her legislation, not given the full review Trudeau had promised during a campaign stop in British Columbia in 2015.

It would have been approved under the new regulations she announced Thursday, and she echoed the prime minister in stating bluntly that the Kinder Morgan expansion would go ahead.

While accusing Harper of favouring politics over science in gutting environmental regulations, McKenna went on to explain the political considerations in the Kinder Morgan approval.

Without Notley’s initiatives in Alberta there would be no national climate plan, McKenna said, and in that context the Liberals gave the go-ahead to the Kinder Morgan expansion Notley so desperately wanted.

In other words, the political equation meant that the Liberals needed a supportive NDP government in Alberta more than the seats it may lose in B.C.’s Lower Mainland in 2019.

The Kinder Morgan expansion may have been in the national interest, but it was also in the Liberals’ interest, particularly with a nemesis, Kenney, ready to challenge Notley at the polls next year.

The minister is promising earlier, more widespread consultation with communities and Indigenous communities, relying more on traditional Indigenous knowledge. It will tell project proponents with whom they must consult, but as McKenna said, smart proponents are already widely consulting with opponents.

This is a government, however, which celebrated its support of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and has supported a private member’s bill by New Democrat Romeo Saganash that would force Canadian laws to conform to the UN declaration

The declaration demands states obtain “free, prior and informed consent” from Indigenous communities before approving resource extraction on Indigenous land.

The Liberals will not enshrine this power — usually described as a veto — in its overhauled process, vowing only to try very hard to obtain that prior consent through consultation.

Sometimes that won’t be possible, she acknowledged, again showing the limits of dialogue when it comes to fulfilling its nation-to-nation reconciliation goals.

But it will talk. And talk some more. But when it is time for a decision, the only guarantee will be more polarization. Tim Harper writes on national affairs. tjharper77@gmail.com, Twitter: @nutgraf1