Who’s advocating for pipelines anymore?
There was a time, not so long ago, when all three major political parties in Ottawa agreed that a proposed pipeline linking Alberta with the St. Lawrence River, and thus the Atlantic Ocean, was a good idea. Energy East — a $12-billion pipeline proposed by TransCanada Corp. — would be good for the oilpatch, good for eastern Canadian refiners, good for Canadian workers and consumers, and good for the country.
Never mind U.S. President Barack Obama’s quixotic refusal to approve the same company’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline connecting the oilsands with the Gulf Coast; never mind the botched effort to secure approvals for Enbridge’s Northern Gateway line to the Pacific Ocean; never mind, even, the controversy over a proposed expansion of a pipeline that has operated successfully and safely since 1953 — the TransMountain line to Burnaby, B.C. Energy East was the fallback, a politically bulletproof idea, the case for which was so compelling that it was practically a done deal.
But sadly, this failed to account for weather-vaning: the tendency of political leaders to shift, skate, obfuscate, shilly-shally, shimmy and wriggle away from clear policy positions they believe in and know to be right, when those positions become politically tricky. That phenomenon has all but stopped Energy East in its tracks.
Is the Harper government in favour of Energy East? Certainly. Pipelines, we were told in late 2011, a few months after the Conservatives won their majority, were fundamental to Canada’s economic future. That hasn’t changed. But sometime in the past two years, federal ministers, including the prime minister, stopped leading on the file — so much so that in November of last year, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall felt compelled to publicly call on the prime minister to personally and clearly make the case for Energy East. Pipeline proponents are still waiting.
Are provincial premiers onside? Um, well, sort of, sometimes. Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, Quebec Premier Phillippe Couillard and Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne are keen on jobs and growth, but worried about the environment and climate change. Are opposition leaders Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau on board? Ah, maybe — it depends on whether the approvals process can be transformed, whether the project can acquire “social licence,” whether, essentially, grassroots opposition can be mollified. Given how pipelines have symbolically come to represent everything the environmentalist far left despises about the energy business, those are very big caveats.
So, allow us to suggest a different approach: Canadian political leaders could try to persuade and lead public opinion, rather than timidly follow.
Natural Resources Canada offers a handy web page, called Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) Concerning Federally-Regulated Petroleum Pipelines in Canada. If one were to Google it, one would find a fine summary of the reasons why pipelines are by far the safest, most efficient and environmentally sound means of transporting oil or natural gas. The alternative, to sum it up, is not that fewer hydrocarbons get burned; it’s trains, which transported 577,000 barrels of oil a day in 2013 and whose use is expected to grow dramatically in the years ahead, absent new pipeline capacity. Not only are pipelines safer than trains; they require less energy and thus, have less impact on the environment.
The energy industry is fundamental to Canadian prosperity and economic security. It contributes nearly a tenth of the country’s GDP and over $20 billion annually in taxes, royalties and fees. Unless federal and provincial leaders have a fantastic, as yet-unveiled scheme to replace this revenue, and all the government programs for which it pays, they should join Brad Wall in strongly defending Energy East. As a bare minimum, they should get out of the way.
Sometime in the past two years, federal ministers, including the prime minister, stopped leading on the Energy East file