Notley can’t afford trade war stalemate
OK, now what?
Now that the Alberta government has threatened to escalate its trade war with British Columbia while simultaneously demanding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau end the trade war, what’s next?
That all depends …
If Premier Rachel Notley ramps up the fight by, as she has suggested, helping Albertans boycott B.C. products, this fight will increasingly look like merely a dispute between two provinces — and Notley doesn’t want that.
She wants the country to see this as a fight between B.C. and Canada over the federal government’s right to approve energy pipelines in general and the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline in particular.
So, Notley wants Trudeau to make the next move by forcefully telling B.C. Premier John Horgan to back down in his insistence that B.C. can dictate how much bitumen Alberta gets to ship to the West Coast for sale overseas.
If Trudeau were to do that, then this fight really would become one between B.C. and the federal government over constitutional powers.
But Ottawa seems reluctant to go that far.
Federal Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr said on the weekend the federal government will not tolerate “unusual or unnecessary delays” to the Kinder Morgan project.
But he didn’t define what is “unusual” or “unnecessary.”
He said Horgan has a right to consult with people and to protect his province’s environment. But there are legal and constitutional issues here that the federal government doesn’t seem to want to address or even acknowledge.
Only the federal government has the power to ratify interprovincial pipelines — and in 2016 Trudeau did just that. He approved the Kinder Morgan project as long as it met conditions set out by the National Energy Board.
On the weekend, Carr said the NEB has the “tools available to make sure that these decisions are made in a timely way.”
But again he didn’t define what is “timely.”
That’s what’s driving Notley a little batty. Time is not on her side. She needs the Kinder Morgan project to get underway this year for her to have a chance to survive next year’s provincial election.
The only glimmer of good news is watching her relations with the Saskatchewan government dramatically improve with the departure of Brad Wall as premier and the arrival of Scott Moe.
Saskatchewan needs pipelines, too, to get its energy products to market.
“We will support the Government of Alberta in any actions against this political decision,” Moe said last week.
I suppose there was another little glimmer of good news: B.C.’s new Liberal leader, Andrew Wilkinson, has also pledged to fight against Horgan’s anti-pipeline agenda.
“The bottom line in intergovernmental and interprovincial relations is ‘Don’t pick fights with your neighbours, and don’t pick fights with the government of Canada’ because they can make your life miserable,” Wilkinson said after winning his party’s leadership vote on the weekend to succeed Christy Clark. Right now, the B.C. government is making life miserable for Notley.
There is, of course, irony upon irony here. Not only are Canada’s two NDP provincial governments at war with one another, Notley’s biggest political allies are two conservative-minded leaders. Not only that, Horgan’s stance is helping Notley’s political rival, United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney.
Kenney has been very quiet the past few days, though. All UCP caucus members are lying low after news broke that one of them, MLA Don MacIntyre, had abruptly quit politics. Friday also saw Kenney announce he would not allow MLA Derek Fildebrandt, who has been sitting as an Independent, back into the caucus.
Fildebrandt was a friend and fierce ally of Kenney, but had made so many bad judgment calls the past year, he had proven himself the Mount Vesuvius of bozo eruptions.
Before he fell silent, Kenney was pushing Notley to escalate the fight by turning off the oil tap, to “let B.C. consumers see what sky-high gas prices look like.”
But that would open up Alberta to sanctions under trade agreements. And it would hurt our energy producers.
That’s the problem with escalating trade wars: unintended consequences. Notley has cut off negotiations over buying more electricity from B.C.
Two problems with that: B.C. has been buying more power from us than the other way around the past few years, and experts say boycotting B.C. electricity in the future could see Albertans pay more for power.
We may have hit a stalemate in the trade war, but Notley can’t afford a stalemate.
That leaves the question: Now what?