Paul Wells
Donald Trump approved of the Keystone XL pipeline project Tuesday. Sort of. Stephen Harper always said it was a no-brainer and, well, here we are.
The Liberal cabinet was meeting in Calgary and reaction was muted. Perhaps surprisingly so. They campaigned on getting Keystone XL approved, if they could. You’re forgiven if you don’t recall. They campaigned on a lot of things. Like, a lot. But for as long as Barack Obama was president, not all the bromance mojo in the world could get Justin Trudeau an inch further down the road than Harper had managed to get.
But now, here we all were, some distance further down the road. Some fundamentally indeterminate distance. Measurable perhaps by quantum physicists, or absurdist playwrights, if at all. In Washington, Trump and his spokesperson, brave Sean Spicer, were making noises about conditions on the approval, with an eye toward getting the best possible deal. A requirement that the pipeline use American steel, for instance. Maybe more.
We are still at the stage where gifts from the White House are being carefully scrutinized for their meaning. “Am I completely unconcerned? No,” Alberta premier Rachel Notley said in a not-quite-celebratory news conference. “Do I continue to monitor this? Very closely.”
Later on Twitter, she welcomed “the news that the U.S. has taken an important step toward moving forward” with Keystone. This was in keeping with her general policy of welcoming steps toward moving forward.
How’s Jim Carr feeling about it all? “Hopeful,” the natural resources minister told reporters as he headed into a second day of cabinet meetings at the Palliser hotel. “A sense of optimism.” If we can move, as briskly as possible, away from the mysteries of Keystone for now and toward more general matters, Carr’s comments in fact reflect the general mood of Liberals as they wrapped up two days of pondering their future on a continent with Donald Trump. Hopeful. Optimistic. Maybe not completely unconcerned. Monitoring this closely.
For the moment, the Trudeau government actually has something few countries have and most envy: the beginnings of a working relationship with the Trump administration. Several hours of meetings in New York with the people who seem to have keys to the kingdom — senior adviser Steve Bannon, son-in-law Jared Kushner — led to a visit in Calgary from billionaire adviser Stephen Schwarzman, who said such nice things about Canada in his remarks to reporters that the whole Trudeau crew was noticeably more chill afterward.
Kushner would have come, but it is not easy to get from Washington to Calgary, especially if one is suddenly discouraged from using one’s private jet, as Kushner has been since he landed a White House gig.
Other world leaders are either mystified by Trump, disdainful of him or disdained by him. Sometimes all three at once. It was excellent theatre for Angela Merkel to be photographed visiting an art gallery while Trump was receiving the oath of office. Some day when the definitive history of Trump is written, Merkel’s gesture will merit a mention. But her staff cannot get calls returned, and the German chancellor heads into an election year pretty sure that neither the Kremlin nor the White House intend to let her win.
Trump is picking enough fights of his own and has enough others on his plate whether he wants them or not, that he will be pleased if there is some corner of a world map he can both recognize and not have to worry about. Trudeau is volunteering to make Canada that spot. Schwarzman’s comments during his visit amounted to a guarantee that the administration does not view Canada as a problematic trade partner. This contrasts with how it views Mexico. The three countries are partners in NAFTA, which Trump has promised to renegotiate.
Does this mean Mexico will have to go? The Canadians hope not. Mexico’s tariff wall against third-party, non-NAFTA countries is high: it would not be painless if Canada suddenly found itself outside that wall. And if we shucked NAFTA and reverted to the Reagan-era bilateral Canada-U.S. trade deal, we’d need to negotiate to get back all the extra chapters that exist in NAFTA only. That would require another dance with Trump the dealmaker, with its attendant uncertainty.
It’s shaping up to be an odd relationship. Washington’s key contacts in Ottawa are a woman journalist with hundreds of hours of CNN airtime, Chrystia Freeland, and a guy in a turban, Harjit Sajjan. And, well, Justin Trudeau. They must seem terribly exotic to their opposite numbers in Washington. But politics always did make strange bedfellows. Paul Wells is a national affairs writer. His column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.