The strange new thing called good news
What’s the cause of this weird feeling, this strange relief, this lifting of weight from the shoulders?
Why, it’s good news, a rare thing these days. I’ve almost forgotten how to write a good news column.
But suddenly there are two huge breakthroughs — the trade deal with the U.S. and LNG Canada’s pending investment go-ahead for a liquid natural gas terminal on the West Coast.
Together they will bring a massive boost not just to morale, but hopefully to investor confidence here and across the country.
The Trudeau government, it has to be said, has done an impeccable job on the excruciatingly difficult trade talks.
Through all the bluster and presidential insults, Canada acted with reserve, dignity and determination.
“Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around,” Justin Trudeau said in June.
His lead minister, Chrystia Freeland, stayed calm and focused despite absorbing a personal insult from President Donald Trump.
“We’re very unhappy with the negotiations and the negotiating style of Canada — we don’t like their representative very much,” Trump said.
That was Freeland, who showed not the slightest concern.
Trudeau himself didn’t fall for Trump’s failure to shake his hand at the United Nations, or the president’s claim that he refused a meeting the prime minister never requested.
Trump’s tactics, so clear by now, are to disrupt, destabilize and demoralize his opponents.
That stuff only works if you let it. The tirades never affected Freeland and her Canadian team, although there were bleak moments when the U.S. started slapping on tariffs.
The reality is that Canada was exceptionally vulnerable.
Trudeau liked to say that 35 American states depend on Canadian trade.
But as the Statistica site points out, only two states derive more than 10 per cent of their GDP from Canadian trade.
By contrast, 31 per cent of Alberta’s GDP is linked directly to U.S. trade. In Ontario, it’s 49 per cent.
There was real danger. And with that came the temptation to grasp at a dubious deal, just to avert full-blown economic disaster.
But Freeland let it run out. And gradually, Americans began to realize that protectionism was already hurting them too.
The steel and aluminum tariffs, a U.S. study concluded, will eliminate 400,000 American jobs overall. Every state would lose jobs.
Just last week, Ford Motor Co. said the tariffs have already cost the company $1 billion in profits.
The trade deal doesn’t come with the cancellation of those tariffs. That’s worrisome, but internal U.S. pressure may get it done soon enough.
Canada’s dairy protection is weakened, although by no means destroyed. If this means lower prices for Canadians, hooray.
The full details of the agreement may reveal problems. Overall, though, this is an amazing job by Trudeau and especially Freeland, his remarkable minister.
You know something significant happened when Alberta Sen. Doug Black, a conservative who has major problems with Liberal energy policies, puts up this tweet:
“Thanks and congratulations for unflagging work to our foreign affairs minister (Freeland), a true Albertan.”
The $40-billion LNG project for Kitimat, with the attendant $4.7-billion pipeline to be built by TransCanada, should boost prices and production volumes.
As I’ve said before, this was made possible in large part by cancelling the Northern Gateway pipeline, thereby killing any chance of oil exports from Kitimat or anywhere else on the northern coast.
Now the Liberal’s Bill C-48 — the north coast moratorium on shipping oil and derived products — will put a final nail in the possibility.
At this point, Alberta gas won’t be tied into the new pipeline. But the LNG Canada terminal is still a positive for the gas industry, the economy and Calgary-based companies. It would certainly ease the gas glut and raise prices.
Perhaps most important of all, the willingness of companies like Shell and PetroChina to invest sends a clear signal of confidence that things can get done in Canada.
Alberta still needs tidewater export of both gas and oil, of course.
Which brings us to the Kinder Morgan pipeline. But if I start talking about that, this wouldn’t be a good news column.