Wall, Alta. need single message
Have some sympathy for Premier Brad Wall’s frustration with America’s lunacy over the Keystone XL pipeline.
The revisionist nonsense aimed at stopping Keystone is befitting of a Ben Affleck movie: The heroic American environmentalist swoops in and saves the world from Canadians hellbent on flooding the good, ol’ United States with the dirtiest oil on Earth. Perhaps Daryl Hannah could play the heroine. After all, it’s been a couple of decades since she’s made a Splash.
However legitimate are Wall’s frustrations with all the politicking over Keystone XL, his upcoming solo mission to Washington — a trip that he at least could have, and should have, shared with Alberta Premier Alison Redford and perhaps even federal officials — is not the best way to go about it.
It’s certainly never easy to co-ordinate plans among different jurisdictions and with various political egos and agendas. Who knows? Maybe it was Redford who balked at being upstaged by Wall. Or maybe the premier’s Washington trip and Keystone pipeline crisis is a convenient diversion a couple of weeks before an unpleasant Saskatchewan budget.
Whatever the case, the notion that Wall can do better on his own because he punches well above his weight is laughable. Notwithstanding a few mostly Republican friendships the premier has cultivated with senators such as Lindsay Graham, his impact on President Barack Obama’s Washington is that of a gnat landing on the hide of an elephant.
A co-ordinated effort would have been the better strategy. That, said Wall’s suitcase for Washington will be packed with some valid points, not the least of which is how ridiculous it is for Americans to use Keystone XL to try to influence Canada’s environmental policy.
“Imagine if this was the Bush White House and the Bush White House was saying, ‘Look, our approval for an important Canadian project in our country is contingent on you, Canada, changing your domestic policy in some area,’ ” Wall told reporters Tuesday.
“Heads would explode, and rightly so. People would be apoplectic.”
He has a point. As loath as some might be to accept the jingoism of “ethical oil” — now the partisan rallying cry of Environment Minister Peter Kent and SUN TV personality Ezra Levant — the premier is correct about what he calls “Hollywood hypocrisy” that gleefully accepts oil from Middle Eastern or African countries that abuse the environment and their own people while labelling Canada as the problem.
In fact, when it comes to North American environmental standards, Wall is right when he notes that, “It isn’t Canada that has catching up to do.”
Columnist Diane Francis of the Financial Post two weeks ago noted that in 2007 Georgia Power Company’s Plant Scherer was the single largest source of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and 20th biggest worldwide, spewing out 27 million tonnes annually.
“The emission from this single plant is equivalent to 75 per cent of the carbon dioxide produced by Canada’s oilsands,” Francis wrote, adding that there are dozens of similar plants in the U.S. “Yet the filthy Georgia utility gets a pass while the oilsands are dubbed the pariah of polluters.”
If environmentalists who oppose Canadian energy want an intellectually honest debate, they would also note that the 3.8 billion tonnes of coal China burned in 2011 was more than the rest of the world combined. Instead, they prefer the tidy, but nonsensical notion that all problems will be solved if we simply stop Keystone XL.
However, if Wall, Redford et al are to make their case to Americans, they surely need to do better than their joint press conference in Edmonton on Wednesday, bizarrely called to “coordinate” their messages after Redford had been to Washington and penned a column in U.S.A. Today.
Wall made valid point at the event about Saskatchewan’s $1,400 per-capita commitment to clean-coal power plants. But if you are an American listening to all this, you might be asking:
“Is this about Keystone XL, coal fired power plants, trade or the environment? If it is about the environment, why are the two Canadian jurisdictions that most opposed the Kyoto accord now lecturing us? In fact, if their position is that the U.S. shouldn’t be interfering in Canada’s domestic matters, why are they attempting to do the same thing in Washington?”
Mostly, though, Washington will be left to wonder the same thing as we are: Why can’t Canadian politicians get their act together?