Moe balances policy, politics in pipeline battle

Where politics stops and legitimate policy concerns start is a spot that’s hard to find.

Consider the Saskatchewan Party’s hardline opposition to any carbon tax. Undeniable is the reality that carbon pricing to the tune of $50 a tonne by 2022 stands as a potentially huge disruption to our economy driven by oil, mining and farming. This has been Premier Scott Moe’s argument since long before his leadership run.

But while Moe (and his predecessor, Brad Wall) can legitimately make arguments about offsetting carbon sinks created by the agricultural and forestry sector, or the net increase in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) if the Evraz steel mill has to abandon its cleaner furnaces in Regina for operations in the U.S. or Russia, or even the value of carbon capture and storage at Boundary Dam 3, what’s also undeniable is the politics.

Rallying the Saskatchewan Party/Conservative base against a tax imposed by a prime minister named Trudeau is good politics. And now that most Saskatchewan voters have bought into this narrative, it becomes even better politics.

One might argue that Moe’s recent tirade against B.C.’s opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline also fits into the category of political posturing. After all, it’s Alberta heavy oil that would flow through Trans Mountain — not Saskatchewan oil.

Moreover, it suspiciously dovetails into that political narrative opposing the carbon tax.

What both issues have in common is legitimate criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his federal Liberal government’s wishy-washy dithering over standing up to B.C.’s NDP government leaning heavily on largely nonsensical environmentalist arguments.

But consider that the political rhetoric you hear can be and often is the vocalization of sincere frustration politicians have over policy disputes.

The spot where policy/ political frustration appears to intersect is where Moe is now standing his ground on Trans Mountain.

To hear the baritone farm boy from Shellbrook rumble “if (the NDP government in) Alberta does turn the taps off, it won’t be Saskatchewan filling up the fuel tanks in British Columbia” may sound so much like politics.

But in landlocked Saskatchewan, getting oil to tidewater is a big issue. And when Moe asks whether it’s B.C.’s coastline or Canada’s coastline, he poses a pretty serious question regarding national unity.

Moe, and Wall before him, proposed the viable alternative of pipelines — of Keystone XL that would move Saskatchewan oil to refineries in Louisiana or the now-shuttered Energy East pipeline that would have moved Western Canadian oil to refineries in Eastern Canada.

Besides standing as a practical symbol of national unity via oil self-sufficiency, it would seem a great way of getting oil off the rails, thus avoiding railway spills of oil and even worse disasters like Lac-Megantic. Also contrary to environmentalists’ notions, we still need oil, and it does little to clean up the world’s greenhouse gas emissions to have half the country east of the Lakehead import dirty oil from Saudi Arabia.

To Saskatchewan, getting oil to port means the difference between selling it for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price (which was US$67.53 a barrel Friday) and the Brent world price (which was US$72.61 a barrel).

Better access to international markets would have earned the oil industry in Saskatchewan an additional $2.6 billion in 2017 and would have added an additional $210 million in taxes, royalties and other revenue, the Saskatchewan government said Friday.

So if they are sensitive to those blocking anyone’s attempts to getting Western oil to port, maybe the anger from politicians coping with budget frustrations and economic recovery is real.

So you can appreciate why Moe might be a little frustrated over environmentalists and B.C. NDP/federal Liberal politicians preventing the approval of a project that essentially replaces a 60-year-old existing pipeline.

Consider how they might view this as piling on after the likes of former Montreal mayor Denis Coderre blocking Energy East for similar partisan political gain. Sometimes, that rhetoric you hear is real political frustration.