National Post (National Edition)
Trudeau takes shine to anti-pipeline activist
Guilbeault could emerge as party force
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has found his Tzeporah Berman. Two days before heading to Calgary for Stampede, he held hands high with anti-pipeline activist Steven Guilbeault, the Liberals' new candidate in the Montreal riding of Laurier.
Guilbeault worked for Greenpeace and founded a Quebec advocacy group, Equiterre. He is a flat-out opponent of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
You'd think Guilbeault would be more at home as a candidate for the NDP or the Greens. But Laurier has been in NDP hands since 2011 and Trudeau wants it for the Liberals.
So there they were together, cheerily holding hands.
What are the plans for Guilbeault in a new Liberal government? Environment minister? Maybe natural resources?
Trudeau is obviously playing to Quebec anti-pipeline sentiment and the will of the province's national assembly.
He has never criticized a unanimous assembly motion that virtually usurped Ottawa's power to regulate and approve pipelines.
On the evidence, activists like Guilbeault don't become moderate once they join the system. They work toward their goals and then — like Tzeporah Berman — pop out the other end as determined as ever.
Guilbeault sounds like Berman did after Notley made her co-chair of the province's oilsands advisory council in 2016.
He says he wants to find solutions from the inside,
even if his old friends are annoyed.
“I did it for 25 years, being outside, proposing ideas and criticizing,” he said.
“I think it's time for me to take the next step and try to change things from the inside. And that's what I'm going to do.”
Activists are already calling him a sellout.
And yet, Guilbeault says Trudeau knows he won't change his view on TMX.
“I told him and I told people that I couldn't defend this project and the prime minister said, ‘Fine, I don't have any problems with that,'” Guilbeault told the environmental publication National Observer.
“He (Trudeau) said it wouldn't be authentic if I did so.”
In 2016 Berman said: “Criticizing from the outside, but not really understanding how to make the change that is necessary is really frustrating, and that's not what I want to do.
“In every campaign I've ever worked on, once you start working on solutions, supporting policy, or working with industry, you are criticized.”
It sounded promising. But as we know, Berman left the oilsands panel after much controversy and went straight back to radical activism.
She had what she wanted — a hard cap on oilsands emissions — without once agreeing that the pipeline was an acceptable trade-off.
Berman now vows to block Trans Mountain, whatever approvals the courts grant, however many First Nations agree with the project.
“It took us 10 years to stop (Northern Gateway),” she said last year. “It took us five years to stop (Energy East). We'll stop this one (Trans Mountain), too.”
Berman was never close to power in Alberta. She was simply on a council that advised the NDP government.
But Guilbeault, if he wins his riding and Trudeau gets a second term, could become a very influential national minister.
Already prominent in Quebec, he's been a climate change adviser to successive provincial governments. Former Liberal minister Stephane Dion praised him as highly influential.
According to news reports, Guilbeault was stonefaced silent when some people cheered Trudeau's remarks about the TMX approval.
I confess to being a bit naive about Berman at the start. It's not a mistake to make twice.
Now, I don't think Guilbeault will single-handedly reverse the fed's purchase of Trans Mountain, or somehow block construction in defiance of current Liberal policy.
But I do think his ardent welcome in the Liberal fold signals at least two things:
There will never be an export pipeline of any kind across Quebec soil while the Liberals are around.
Everywhere else in Canada, there will never be a new pipeline after TMX.
Otherwise, how could Steven Guilbeault be authentic?
OBVIOUSLY PLAYING TO QUEBEC ANTI-PIPELINE SENTIMENT.